Alessia POV
The isolation descended the moment the door clicked shut, but the real blow didn't land until three weeks later.
I was living in a safe house that felt more like a mausoleum, pacing the empty halls and waiting for Luca to fix the mess he had created, when the call came.
My mother, Sarah, had collapsed at the grocery store.
Luca drove me to the Family's private clinic. It was a facility funded by racketeering and high-stakes gambling, a place where bullet wounds were stitched up in silence and without police reports. The air didn't just smell of antiseptic; it reeked of bleach and buried secrets.
My mother lay in the narrow bed, looking small and frighteningly gray. She was a civilian, a gentle woman who had married my father thinking his dangerous edge was romantic, only to spend thirty years terrified of her own doorbell.
She squeezed my hand. Her skin felt like dry, brittle paper.
"Alessia," she wheezed, the sound wet and painful. "Her breath rattled deep in her chest. "It hurts."
I looked up at the doctor. He was a man on Luca's payroll, a disgraced surgeon whose medical license had been revoked in two other states for gross negligence.
"What is it?" I asked, my voice rising in panic. "She was fine yesterday."
"Pneumonia," the doctor said, studiously adjusting an IV drip and not meeting my eyes. "Complications. Her lungs are failing."
It didn't make sense. It was impossible. My mother had the lungs of an opera singer. She never smoked. She walked five miles a day, rain or shine.
Luca stood in the corner of the room, watching. He wasn't looking at my mother, or at me. He was looking at his phone, his thumbs moving rapidly as he typed a message.
"Do something," I begged the doctor, gripping the bedrail until my knuckles turned white. "Put her on a ventilator. Fix this."
"We are doing everything we can," the doctor said flatly, reciting a script.
I spent the night in the stiff vinyl chair beside her bed. I watched the monitors beep in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. I watched the life drain out of the only person in the world who loved me unconditionally.
Around 3:00 AM, Luca came back in. He put a hand on my shoulder. It felt heavy, like a yoke locking me into place.
"You should go get some coffee, Ava," he said, his voice low. "I'll sit with her."
I didn't want to leave, but I was blind with exhaustion. I walked down the hall to the vending machine, my footsteps echoing on the linoleum. The hallway was empty.
I heard voices coming from the nurses' station around the corner.
"Is the transport ready?" It was the doctor's voice, hushed and urgent.
"Yes," a nurse whispered back. "The recipient is prepped in Wing B. We need the harvest within the hour or the tissue won't be viable."
I frowned, pausing with my hand on the coin slot. I didn't know what they were talking about, but a cold shiver ran down my spine. Pushing the unease away, I bought a black coffee and walked back.
When I got to the room, the door was closed. The blinds were drawn.
I burst in.
The monitor was screaming a single, high-pitched tone. A flat line.
My mother was gone.
Luca was standing by the bed, his head bowed. He looked up at me, his face a mask of practiced sorrow.
"She's gone, Ava," he said. "Her heart gave out."
I screamed. The sound tore from my throat, raw and animalistic.
I threw the coffee against the wall, watching the dark liquid splash like ink. I rushed to the bed and shook her shoulders, but she was already cooling. It felt too fast. It felt wrong.
Luca pulled me into his chest. He held me tight, trapping my arms so I couldn't thrash.
"Shh," he soothed, stroking my hair. "I'm here. I'm the only family you have left now."
I sobbed into his expensive suit jacket, clinging to him for support, not realizing I was crying on the chest of the man who had just authorized the theft of my mother's lungs for his stepsister.
