Claimed by My Father's Rival

Flashback, age fifteen

"...When morning breaks, I'll keep you safe beside me..."

I sat on the carpet with my eyes closed, listening to the song through my earbuds, my brown hair still damp and fragrant with lemon-scented shampoo, spread loose over my shoulders.

This was the one brief, precious stretch of the day when I didn't have to hold myself together.

Even turning a page sent a spike of pain through my wrist. Courtesy of my father - the buckle-shaped bruise from last week hadn't healed yet, and last night had added a fresh one. I glanced up at the mirror. A bruise the color of a storm cloud bloomed across my forehead. I dabbed on a thin layer of iodine, and the second it grazed the swollen skin, I hissed and sucked in a breath.

"Bang!"

A crash exploded from downstairs - the sound of a door slamming so hard it hit the wall.

The man they called my father - Carmine Moretti - was home.

I could gauge exactly how much he'd had to drink just from the sound of that door. And there was no mistaking it: this was the worst he'd been in six months.

My father had ruled this city's underworld for a decade. Lately, word was he'd run into a bit of "trouble" - some hot-headed upstart, avenging a dead sister, was chewing through his territory.

I'd overheard that much from behind the staircase railing. Not that they ever bothered to lower their voices around me. Why would an elephant bother hiding anything from an ant?

I scrambled to shove the book and earbuds out of sight. Anything that made it look like I was enjoying myself became kindling for his temper. I hated how practiced I'd become at hiding it.

Please, I begged the empty air. Let tonight pass quietly.

Tears were already gathering.

Downstairs, my mother's voice rang out, falsely bright: "Carmine, you're home-"

The words never finished. A sharp crack of a slap cut her off.

"Shut your mouth, you useless bitch."

"No!" My mother's cry was short, cut off almost as soon as it started.

Then came the thudding - dull, heavy, one after another, tangled with the slur of my father's curses.

Bile rose in my throat. Cold sweat slid down my forehead, and my hands went numb and icy.

For one unbearable second, I wanted to crawl under the desk and disappear.

No. I couldn't. He'd kill her.

Fifteen years old, and was I still that child who only knew how to hide? I bolted out of my room, ducking first into my sister Mia's. Six-year-old Mia was fast asleep, clutching her stuffed animal. I slipped a pair of noise-canceling earmuffs over her ears, then ran downstairs.

I smelled the blood before I even reached the living room.

My father's knee was pinning my mother's spine to the floor. One hand fisted in her hair, slamming her head against the tile again and again, blood already spreading across the grout lines. As if that weren't enough to satisfy him, his other fist came down on her back - one dull, heavy blow after another.

At first my mother screamed. Before long, all that was left was a broken, breathless rasp from somewhere deep in her throat.

"Dad... please stop... Mom's going to die..." My lips trembled as I clung to the table for support.

He didn't even look at me. I was invisible to him right now - I'd only become his next target once he'd finished with her.

My fingers moved without thought across the tabletop and closed around something heavy and cold - a brass ashtray.

My heart lurched.

Maybe. Maybe this could be the night this nightmare ended.

I closed my eyes, took one step forward, and swung the ashtray as hard as I could into the back of his skull-

***

Present, age twenty

A crack of thunder yanked me out of that five-year-old abyss.

I looked up. Rain hammered the window like it had gone mad, and it had been coming down for hours now. Every storm dragged me back to that blood-soaked night. I shook my head and slotted the hemostat back into the sterilizer tray.

I was studying pre-nursing at community college - straight A's. My professor had tried more than once to talk me into transferring to a four-year state program, had even lined up a scholarship for me. I turned her down every time.

I wanted a better school. But only a place this overcrowded, this forgettable, was safe enough. The Morettis could scour the whole East Coast and never think to look here.

To me, safety mattered more than anything. All I wanted was for Mom and Mia to stay alive, and to stay together.

Classes in the day, the clinic in the afternoon, home with them in the evening. Tight on money, but steady. A resident once or twice had asked me out for coffee. I always turned them down. I didn't dare. Someone like me - someone the past could swallow whole at any moment - didn't get to fall in love.

Mia had asked me once why I never went on dates. I'd lied and told her I was saving up to buy her headphones. She believed me.

The new mint-green pair sat in my canvas bag right now, bought with this month's paycheck. If it weren't for this storm, she'd already be wearing them.

Just picturing her smile put a little life back into my legs after a full day on my feet.

A car pulled up outside, its headlights sweeping the window and setting off every alarm bell in my body. Five years of running had taught me to bristle at anything that disturbed the stillness. Most of the time, it turned out to be nothing but my own paranoia.

Mia always told me, Sis, you're too jumpy.

She'd been too young to remember how terrifying our father really was. Besides - what was the harm in being careful?

I slipped behind the curtain and fixed my eyes on the car.

No one got out. A few minutes later, it pulled away, leaving nothing but rain under the streetlight. I let out a breath. Just some poor soul who'd gotten the wrong address. Nobody ran a clinic out here at midnight - not unless they had a doctor's private number.

I turned back to the exam room and went on packing up the instruments.

Crash-

The glass in the clinic door shattered in an instant, and the door was kicked open, letting in a gust of cold, rain-soaked air.

That same car sat outside, its high beams blazing straight through the doorway, blinding me. Silhouetted against the light stood a tall figure.

I raised a hand to shield my eyes, still unable to make out his face - only that two eyes had fixed on me and refused to look away.

He stepped inside, boots crunching over broken glass with every stride, and with each step closer, the thick copper smell of blood filled the clinic.

He stopped a yard away. Every hair on my body stood on end.

Damn it.

I snatched a scalpel from the tray and backed against the wall - an instinct hard-wired into me after five years on the run. I studied him: too tall, a black suit stretched taut over a powerful frame, collar loosened, a bead of water tracing the line of his jaw.

He stood there, a yard away, and his eyes - dark, unreadable - swept over me the way a predator looks over something it already owns.

"The Moretti heiress," a cold curve tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You've been a hell of a lot of trouble to find."

-So. Found at last.