Gia POV
I remembered the day Cassio extracted me from my life three years ago.
He had found me in a Queens tenement that smelled of boiled cabbage and damp plaster, his eyes hard and his commands unyielding. He had warned me then that to preserve the peace in his empire, I was to submit to Serafina's reign.
Back then, I had sworn obedience to my brother's command. I had craved the idea of belonging so acutely that I accepted Serafina's psychological warfare.
It began with erasure: she forbade the Don from ever referring to me as his blood sister in public.
Then came the humiliation. Exercising her stolen authority, she had me moved to a windowless room in the sub-basement, near the groaning pipes of the kitchens. Meanwhile, she occupied the lavish penthouse suite with its view of the entire city skyline.
When the cloying, mildewed air of the basement made me sick, I broke. I begged Cassio for a proper room with a single window.
Serafina intervened.
She mocked me in front of the Capos, claiming my former safe house had been a worse hovel than the basement. Then, in a calculated fit of hysteria, she ran to the balcony ledge. She balanced there, a silhouette against the evening sky, and threatened to break the mafia code by defecting to a rival Syndicate if I was granted my request.
A tremor went through Cassio's frame. His forearm tensed, shoving me toward the rough flagstones as he rushed to restrain Serafina. Once she was back on solid ground, he turned his wrath on me.
He roared at me to apologize for upsetting her. The ordeal ended with me forced into a humiliating, deep curtsy before his chosen sister, my head bowed as if she were royalty, while the guards watched in a heavy, suffocating silence.
Since that day, Serafina's tyranny escalated.
She banned me from wearing designer gowns to the Syndicate galas. She threatened to blackmail Cassio into officially branding me as a mere Associate, a servant on the family payroll. During exclusive Family banquets, she ensured the guards kept me locked in my room. If Cassio dared to show me an ounce of mercy, Serafina would press a stolen mafia blade to her own throat.
Now, three years later, I bore the Don's surname, but I was nothing but a ghost in his halls.
My upbringing in the city's forgotten corners had forged a silent discipline in me. I refused to stoop to Serafina's hysterics. Instead, I remembered the words Leo whispered to me the night our guardians were murdered: "A true survivor honors her own worth."
The sharp click of a woman's heel against marble snapped me back to the present.
Serafina emerged from the mausoleum, her posture a study in irritation.
"Why haven't you entered yet?" she demanded.
"You ungrateful stray," she mocked, the words sharp and pointed.
Cassio clamped his hand on my arm again. His fingers dug into my skin, attempting to drag me into the sacred grounds to avoid another scene.
I planted my feet on the gravel.
"I want to go home," I stated. "I want to go back. Back to Leo's territory."
Cassio's forward momentum ceased. A network of fine lines appeared at the corners of his eyes, and his gaze acquired a dangerous, metallic quality.
"Why would you return to that world when your guardians are dead?" he demanded. "It is too dangerous for an unprotected woman."
His grip on my wrist tightened, a possessive, bruising hold. He stepped into my space, his chest brushing my shoulder. "What has possessed you to defy me today?"
A long, slow breath escaped my lips. I looked him in the eye. "I have another brother," I revealed. "Leo."
Serafina cut me off with a laugh like shattering glass.
"Then crawl back to the gutter where you belong!" she spat.
She looked at Cassio, a malicious glint in her eyes. "I wager my life she will come crawling back to the Syndicate gates in two days."
For the first time in three years, Cassio did not immediately side with Serafina. His jaw clenched.
"The civilian world is ruthless," he argued, a flicker of something other than certainty in his voice. "Do you intend to live like a starving peasant again?"
Serafina's expression curdled at his hesitation. She pointed a manicured finger at me.
"If you leave," she demanded, "you must strip yourself of everything funded by this Family's blood money!"
Cassio fell silent. He crossed his arms, assuming the threat of poverty would force my submission.
I held Serafina's challenging stare for a long moment.
Then, the designer bag slipped from my shoulder, its heavy buckle thudding softly against the crushed stones.
The heavy diamond necklace and bracelet were peeled from my skin, tracing a cold arc through the air before collapsing with the bag, like a pile of magnificent industrial waste, onto the gravel.
"This," I declared, my voice clear of any regret, "is everything the Syndicate ever gave me."
I turned and began walking down the gravel path, away from the mausoleum, away from the only blood I had ever known. I did not look back to see if Cassio would follow. Some part of me already knew he would.
