Seraphina stared at me.
A soldier's voice came shouting from beyond the door.
"Donna! Gabriel's operation went sideways. He's coughing blood. The doctor says he won't last!"
Seraphina seized my wrist, her grip so fierce it nearly ground the bones together.
"Come with me."
The great hall of the Falcone compound.
Gabriel lay on a leather chaise, blood smeared across his lips.
A cluster of the family's private physicians knelt on the floor before him.
"Reporting to the Donna: Gabriel's chest wound has ruptured internally. He needs a direct transfusion from someone in the same blood circle to stabilize him."
In all the Falcone Syndicate, only two of us shared that particular lineage. Seraphina and me.
Seraphina flipped her hand and produced a knife.
It was the one I'd given her three years ago for her birthday. The inscription I'd had engraved along the blade was still there: Per la tua protezione.
She held it out to me.
"Save him."
I looked at the edge of the blade.
I was leaving soon anyway. It didn't matter if this body was ruined.
"Fine."
I loosened my collar and bared my chest.
Old scars crisscrossed the skin there, layered one on top of another. Every last one from shielding her during wars with rival families.
Seraphina's gaze fell on those scars. The hand holding the knife went still.
Gabriel let out a groan from the chaise.
Her hand drove forward.
The blade punched through skin and muscle, sinking into my chest above the heart.
The pain was blinding.
I clenched my teeth and made no sound.
Seraphina twisted her wrist, drawing out three vials' worth of blood, dark and thick and still warm from the source.
The moment the blood left my body, my legs gave out. I collapsed to the floor.
My vision went black.
Through the haze, I felt Seraphina's hand reach over and press against my chest.
She didn't stanch the bleeding. Instead, she pinched her fingers together, plucked a scrap of blood-soaked fabric from my shirt, and slipped it into her sleeve.
That voice surfaced again:
So much blood...
Still warm.
This is his blood. Hide it away. For my eyes only.
The hall's entrance was packed with soldiers and associates.
They watched me lying on the ground. Not one stepped forward.
"Everyone could see the protégé resented Gabriel. I just never thought he'd push him this far."
"Having a little blood drawn is getting off easy."
"Exactly. He deserved it."
I lay on the cold marble, staring at the translucent panel hovering before my eyes.
Countdown: 1 day.
I closed my eyes.
Almost there.
Countdown: three hours remaining.
The Falcone compound was alive with noise today.
Red banners draped every gate, and a brass band played from the courtyard while capos arrived in black sedans that lined the gravel drive end to end.
It was Gabriel's making ceremony.
Never mind that my blood was the only reason his body had stabilized. Nothing could stop him from being the star everyone orbited.
They dragged me out of the basement cell.
Plain white undershirt, still stiff with dried blood.
Shackles on my wrists and ankles.
The iron scraped against the long marble staircase as they hauled me upward, the sound shrill enough to set teeth on edge.
Seraphina sat enthroned at the very top, upon a carved chair of white stone that had belonged to every Don and Donna before her.
Beside her stood Gabriel, resplendent in a tailored black suit, color blooming in his cheeks. He laughed at something one of the capos said, half a beat too late, his eyes scanning the room first.
What a perfect pair they made.
I was dragged onto the raised platform.
Two enforcers pressed down on my shoulders, forcing me to kneel.
I didn't kneel.
Even though the damage from the cold had eaten into my kneecaps until every nerve screamed, I kept my spine straight.
Seraphina looked down at me from above. Her left hand drifted to her wrist, fingers rotating slowly, adjusting something that wasn't there.
Her voice, amplified through the compound's speakers, carried to every corner of the estate.
"You harbored jealousy toward a fellow member of this family. Your loyalty was corrupt."
"Gabriel has now been formally inducted, yet he still lacks the Ledger to anchor his position."
"As his predecessor, this shall be your final act of atonement."
Carving it out. Extracting every name, every debt, every transaction, every secret I held in my mind and handing it over.
So this was the grand finale all along.
The Ledger was innate, the kind of gift every syndicate in the world coveted. A supreme asset, one in a generation.
It was also what Seraphina had once been proudest of. Her greatest weapon.
Now she was going to cut it out of me with her own hands and put it inside another man.
Below the platform, a thousand soldiers and associates chanted in unison.
"We call upon the protégé to surrender the Ledger in atonement!"
The roar crashed over me like a tide, deafening.
I looked at Seraphina.
