Thanks to the constant injuries, I developed a high fever that refused to break. I was unconscious for three full days. During that time, I had a long, vivid dream.

The dream was filled with warm light.

In it, I was never lost. My parents had never taken in Serafina. They loved only me, their blood daughter, the one they called their precious girl. Dante was still the same boy who used to wait outside the iron gate of the Moretti estate every morning, his coat buttoned wrong, just so he could walk beside me on the way to school.

Later, he told me he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me in a garden thick with climbing roses, away from the families, away from the arrangements that made marriages into territorial mergers. At the ceremony he held my hand and promised me forever, and his voice never wavered, and nobody in the pews was calculating what the union was worth in shipping routes or clean-money fronts. After we married, we had a child, a sweet and perfect thing. The three of us were a happy, whole family, untouched by the syndicate world that had shaped every other part of our lives.

But in the next moment, everything changed.

The warm light went out as though someone had cut the power at the fuse box. My parents' smiles turned cold. Dante's hand, the one that had been so warm around mine, became icy and distant, the signet ring on his finger pressing into my skin like a brand.

The three of them stood at the edge of a cliff. They were laughing, all of them, that particular cruelty that only people who once loved you can produce. And then they pushed me down into the darkness below. I woke with a sharp gasp, my chest heaving. My eyes flew open to an empty room in the family clinic.

My body felt weak and impossibly heavy. My shoulder throbbed with each pulse, a deep, nauseating ache that radiated down to my fingertips as I slowly pushed myself upright. My arm was numb and trembling. With great effort I pulled the IV needle from the back of my hand, pressed the cotton swab over the bead of blood, and slid out of bed. The tile floor was cold enough to make me flinch. The clinic was small, discreet, the kind of place the Moretti Family kept on retainer for injuries that did not need public hospital records. No police. No questions. Just silence and locked doors.

As I stepped into the hallway, I heard hushed voices coming from the nurses' station around the corner. I stopped. My bare feet made no sound on the linoleum.

"Look at those two young ladies from the Moretti Family. Their lives couldn't be more different."

"I know, right? Serafina only had a few minor injuries, but the Boss and his wife stayed by her side every single day, and Dante Falcone never left her for a second. Meanwhile, Bianca was seriously hurt and no one even came to visit her these past three days…"

One of them clicked her pen cap shut, and the other finished the thought she should not have said aloud: "Three days unconscious and not a single family member through that door. Not one."

Their whispers were crystal clear, cutting into my heart like a blade.

My knees went weak for a moment, but I steadied myself against the wall. I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist until a pale crescent appeared, letting the small, focused pain anchor me to the present, to the facts. Nobody had come. Not once. The fact did not surprise me. What surprised me was how much it still hurt, after everything, to have the proof laid out in the mouths of strangers.

It made me not hesitate. After that, I walked slowly to the nurses' station while holding on to the wall for support, and I signed my own discharge papers. The nurse behind the desk glanced up, glanced at my shoulder, and opened her mouth to object. I met her eyes and she looked away. In this world, you learned early: a Moretti daughter's signature was still a Moretti signature, even if the family treated her like a ghost.

When I returned to the Moretti estate, it was eerily quiet. The courtyard fountain trickled in the stillness. No soldiers at the front entrance, no staff moving through the halls. Everyone was out, orbiting Serafina like planets around a brighter sun. I went straight to my room and began packing. There was not much. One small suitcase. That was all I had left in a house where I had lived my entire life. One suitcase, and even that felt generous.

After I finished, I went downstairs to get some water. Just as I reached the living room, I heard the sound of laughter outside the front door. Voices, car doors, the particular note of a family arriving home in good spirits. They were back.

My parents entered first, carefully supporting Serafina as she limped inside. She leaned into them with practiced fragility, her bandaged ankle presented like a medal of war. Dante followed close behind. His eyes were full of tenderness as he looked at her. The four of them chatted happily, warmly, as if nothing had happened, as if I had not spent three days unconscious in a clinic bed two miles from where they stood.

When they saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, Dante's steps faltered. For a brief second, I caught a flash of heartache in his eyes as he noticed my pale face, the way my hand still gripped the banister because my legs were not entirely trustworthy yet. His right hand moved, almost involuntarily, and I watched him roll the signet ring over his knuckle once before he caught himself.

But before he could speak, my mother rushed toward me. Elena Moretti's voice was sharp and full of blame as she confronted me. "Bianca, what is wrong with you? Why didn't you tell us you were being discharged? Do you know how worried we were about you?"

My father immediately added his weight to the accusation. Salvatore Moretti stood with one hand resting on Serafina's shoulder, a display of protection so automatic it could not have been staged. "Serafina already explained what happened. She said she lost her balance that day and accidentally dragged you into the fire. Out of guilt, she pushed you away to save you. She didn't mean it."

He tapped once on the side table with the pad of his thumb, the gesture I had seen a hundred times before a negotiation reduced someone to a number. "And you… you're being ungrateful, leaving the clinic on your own and throwing a tantrum?"

Serafina lowered her head, her expression pitiful and weak, the portrait of a girl still suffering for her innocent mistake. But at the corners of her lips there was a subtle, triumphant smile. It was a smile meant only for me to see. Her lower lashes fluttered once, quickly, the way they always did when the lie mattered.

She looked at me like a victor claiming her prize.

I stared at them all and suddenly laughed bitterly. The sound was thin and hard in the marble foyer, and I saw one of the household staff freeze mid-step in the corridor behind them.

"Worried about me? So worried that during my three-day coma, you only cared about Serafina and never once came to see me?"

My eyes shifted to Serafina and I spoke coldly. "Serafina, this time you're claiming you 'lost your balance' again? You really do change your excuses quickly."

This time, I looked at them coldly. I was no longer the obedient girl they used to know, the one who swallowed every slight and called it love, the one who kept her head down because the Family demanded it.

I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist one final time, felt the crescent bite, and let my hand fall to my side. My voice was level and clear, carrying the way a warning carries in a quiet room full of dangerous people.

"Watch your precious daughter carefully. If she dares to lay a hand on me again, I won't hold back. If I'm not happy, I won't let her be happy either."

After that, I turned and walked up the stairs. I did not look back at their shocked and furious faces. I did not need to. I could feel the silence I had left behind me, heavy as gunpowder before a match.

This house. These people. They were no longer worth a single moment of my time.

I had already explained everything, made my position clear to anyone in that house willing to listen. Now I stood in the narrow guest room on the second floor of the Moretti estate, folding the last of my clothes into a leather overnight bag that had seen better years. The room smelled of old wood polish and dust, as if the staff had stopped bothering to air it out the moment they learned who slept here. I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist, felt the familiar half-moon bite into skin, and told myself the next twenty-four hours were all that remained. One more night under the Moretti roof. Then Edinburgh. Then whatever hell the Bellandi name carried with it. At least it would be a hell I had chosen.

The door did not open. It slammed inward against the plaster hard enough to rattle the crucifix on the opposite wall.

Serafina walked in on heels that cracked against the hardwood like a judge's gavel. She wore a fitted black dress, gold earrings catching the overhead light, her chin tilted at the precise angle of someone who had already decided the conversation was won before it started. Her gaze swept the overnight bag, the bare hangers in the open wardrobe, the stripped bed, and her mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile. She looked at me with eyes full of defiance, the way someone looks at luggage they are glad to see packed.

She strode up to me, close enough that I could smell her perfume, something floral and expensive that clashed with the venom in her voice. "Bianca, do you really think you're so special just because you're our parents' biological daughter? They love me now."

The words landed the way she intended them to, each one placed like a card on a table during a rigged game. Her lower lashes fluttered once, a quick tremor that someone who did not know her tells might have mistaken for emotion. I knew better. That flutter meant the lie sitting behind the next sentence mattered to her more than the one she had just delivered.

"I've known all along," she continued, folding her arms and letting her weight settle onto one hip as though we were discussing something as trivial as dinner plans. "You're going to marry that lunatic for me. Isn't the bride price just one billion? After I marry Dante, there will be far more money. Plenty more."

She let the number hang in the stale air of the room. One billion. The figure Salvatore Moretti had negotiated for my hand, the sum the Bellandi outfit had agreed to funnel through clean channels in exchange for a blood-bound union that would open their shipping lanes through Moretti-controlled docks. I was the goods. The dowry was the receipt.

Her tone dripped with arrogance as she pressed on, and the floral perfume seemed to grow heavier with every sentence. "Dante's concession is going to generate more revenue than I could spend in ten lifetimes. The Moretti and Falcone families are far ahead in territory and connections. With us together, we'll be unstoppable."

She leaned closer. I could see the thin line of concealer beneath her left eye, the slight unevenness in her lipstick where she had reapplied it in a hurry. Her voice dropped to a vicious whisper, intimate and edged, the kind of voice reserved for confessionals and threats. "And you… you're just trading one hell for another. The Bellandi Family is cruel beyond words. Once you marry into their family, you might not even survive three days."

A pause. She tilted her head as though considering whether to say the rest.

"If you manage to live, you'll get the money. If you die… you'll leave it all behind, untouched."

Her cruel words echoed in my ears. They bounced off the bare walls, the empty hangers, the stripped mattress, the crucifix that no one in this house had prayed to on my behalf. Every syllable was designed to remind me that in the Moretti ledger I was an entry to be written off, a cost of doing business, a daughter whose only remaining value was the price tag someone else had stapled to her name. The anger I'd been holding back for so long, through the coma, through the hospital silence, through the nurses' whispered pity, through the moment I had watched my own parents choose the daughter they had purchased over the one they had made, finally exploded.

I raised my hand and slapped her hard across the face. The sharp sound rang through the room like a gunshot.

It was louder than I expected. It silenced the corridor outside. Somewhere down the hall a floorboard creaked as if one of the household staff had frozen mid-step, unwilling to be a witness. The imprint of my fingers bloomed pink across Serafina's cheekbone, vivid against the careful foundation she wore like armor, and I watched the shock crack through her composure the way a stone cracks a frozen pond.

A cold smile spread across my lips as I glared at her.

"Really? Then I hope you get exactly what you deserve."

Serafina's hand flew to her cheek. She stared at me, her manicured nails pressing into the reddening skin, and for the first time since she had walked through that door the superiority drained out of her face. What replaced it was not fear. It was outrage, the kind that comes from someone who has never once been made to feel consequence.

"You… you dare hit me? Bianca, how dare you hit me!"

I didn't waste a single breath on her. I swung again. Harder. The second slap connected with a crack that I felt all the way up to my shoulder, and this time blood welled instantly at the corner of her mouth. A thin crimson line slid down her chin, bright against her pale skin, and dripped onto the collar of her black dress like a seal on a letter I had been composing in silence for years.

At that moment, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed outside, heavy and careless, the stride of a man who expected doors to open before he reached them. The door burst inward for the second time. Dante Falcone filled the frame, broad-shouldered in a charcoal suit, his jaw locked and his dark eyes already scanning the room before his body had fully crossed the threshold. The signet ring on his right hand caught the light as his fingers curled. The second he saw Serafina's bloody mouth, his eyes filled with rage so intense it was almost murderous. His hand moved to the ring, rolling it over the knuckle once, twice, a tic I had learned to read the way sailors read a darkening sky.

"Bianca! Have you gone mad? Who gave you the right to hit her?"

He did not wait for an answer. He crossed the room in three strides, boots grinding grit into the hardwood, and pulled Serafina into his arms. She folded against his chest as though she had been rehearsing the collapse for hours, her bloodied lip pressed to the lapel of his jacket, her fingers clutching the fabric. He tilted her face upward and carefully wiped the blood from her lips with the pad of his thumb, and the tenderness in that gesture cut deeper than any slap.

Before I could speak, before I could explain, before I could do anything at all, his open palm struck my face with a loud crack. Pain exploded across my cheek, white-hot and instantaneous. My head jerked to the side, my vision swimming, and my mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. The inside of my cheek had split against my teeth. I tasted iron and salt and something that might have been the last residue of whatever loyalty I had ever felt for the man standing in front of me.

I swallowed it down. Slowly, deliberately, I lifted my head and looked at him. His chest was heaving, his ring still catching the light, Serafina still curled against him like a wounded bird performing for an audience. I did not give him my anger. I gave him something worse.

I smiled. Cold. Finished.

"Dante, I hope you won't regret this."

My parents arrived right after him, Salvatore Moretti leading with his broad frame and Elena a half-step behind, her hand already reaching for the doorframe as though she needed its support. They crossed into the room and immediately rushed to my side. Not to protect me. Not to ask what had happened. Not to check the blood I could feel pooling against my gum line. They came to scold me like I was a stranger who had wandered uninvited into a house that no longer considered her family.

"Bianca, you ungrateful wretch! How could you hurt Serafina like this? What has she ever done to you?"

Elena's voice cracked on the last word, and her fingers moved to the front of her blouse, smoothing a wrinkle that was not there, pressing and pressing at the fabric as though she could iron out the scene before her into something more palatable to her conscience.

Serafina clung to Dante, crying pitifully, her shoulders shaking with sobs that came at perfectly timed intervals. Yet her trembling voice was laced with false kindness as she spoke, each word calibrated to land like a blade wrapped in silk. "Dante, Mum, Dad… please don't scold Bianca anymore. It's my fault. I shouldn't have upset her."

She drew a shuddering breath, pressed her face deeper into Dante's chest, and delivered the final line with the precision of someone who had practiced it in the mirror. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I won't trouble this family again. I just don't want her to keep being unhappy because of me…"

Her performance only added fuel to the fire. Salvatore's face hardened, his thumb tapping once against the outside of his thigh, the same gesture he used at the head of the dining table before reducing family to numbers. Dante's expression became even more grim. His rage was nearly uncontrollable, a muscle twitching in his jaw, his hand still curled at his side as though the first strike had not been enough.

Dante then shouted toward the doorway, a single sharp command, and two enforcers in black entered the room with the silent coordination of men who had been waiting on the other side of the wall. Their faces were blank. Their hands were gloved.

"Drag her outside. Hang her upside down from the tree in the yard," he ordered.

He paused. The room was so quiet I could hear Serafina's breathing, deliberate and theatrical, against his jacket. His tone cut me like a knife when he continued. "Let the sun warm her dark, filthy heart. The Falcone Family does not tolerate Sisters as vile as her."

The enforcers moved without hesitation, seizing me by the arms. Their grips were iron, indifferent, the grip of men who did not distinguish between a woman and a crate that needed moving.

"Dante! Let me go! You can't do this to me!"

But no one listened. Not the enforcers whose fingers dug into the soft flesh above my elbows. Not Salvatore, who watched from the doorway with an expression that might have been discomfort or might have been nothing at all. Not Elena, who had turned her face away entirely. They dragged me down the corridor, through the back entrance, and out into the courtyard where the old oak spread its branches over the flagstones like a hand waiting to close.

My struggles were meaningless against their strength. I kicked, twisted, threw my weight sideways, and they adjusted their grip without breaking stride as though they had done this a hundred times before for men who had displeased the Falcone heir.

The rough rope bit into my ankles as they tied me up, the hemp fibers scraping skin that was still tender from the hospital. With a hard yank, they hoisted me upside down from the thick lowest branch. The world inverted. Blood rushed to my head, making me dizzy and nauseous, the pressure building behind my eyes until the courtyard swam in blurred greens and grays.

The scorching midday sun beat down mercilessly on my body. My skin burned. My chest tightened. My breath came in ragged gasps that tasted of rope fiber and heated air and the distant smell of rosemary from the kitchen garden no one had ever let me tend. Through the haze of heat and pain, I tilted my head, the movement sending a wave of vertigo crashing through me, and caught sight of the living room window.

Inside, Dante was tenderly applying medicine to Serafina's wounds, dabbing at the split lip I had given her with a cotton pad as though it were a war injury. My parents sat beside her, speaking softly, comforting her, Elena's hand resting on Serafina's knee and Salvatore nodding along to whatever gentle fiction she was spinning. The three of them looked like a warm, happy family, framed by the window like a portrait commissioned to hang over a fireplace, and I was the shadow they had cut out of the canvas.

Tears streamed from my eyes, falling upward from my perspective, dropping down to the flagstones below. The hot sun dried them instantly, leaving no trace. No evidence. No record that I had broken at all. I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached and swore silently to myself.

Just one day. I only had to endure this for one day. When I got free, I would make every single one of them pay for what they had done to me.

I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist, felt the crescent form even through the numbness spreading down my arms, and held it there like a brand. A promise. A receipt of my own.

Meanwhile, the sunlight grew hotter and hotter. My vision blurred. The courtyard, the oak, the rope, the window with its happy family portrait, all of it spun wildly around me, faster and faster, until the edges dissolved and the center followed.

Finally, everything went black.

Once I regained consciousness, I was lying in my room, wrapped in a soft quilt that smelled faintly of lavender and starch. Fresh bandages covered the wound on my shoulder where the rope had bitten deepest, the gauze clean and neatly tied by hands more careful than any that usually touched me in this house. I heard movement near the door, the quiet shuffle of flat shoes on hardwood, and then the servant's voice, pitched low as if she'd been instructed not to startle me.

"Miss, you're awake? Mr. Falcone was very distressed after bringing you down from the tree yesterday. He told me to take special care of you."

Distressed. The word settled in my chest like a splinter. Dante Falcone, who had strung me up in the courtyard sun with his own order, was now distressed. I said nothing. My thumbnail found the inside of my wrist beneath the quilt and pressed until a pale crescent appeared, the small flare of pain a more honest thing than anything spoken in this room.

The servant pointed toward a large box beside the bed. Cream-colored, tied with a satin ribbon, the kind of packaging that belonged in a boutique window on Via Condotti. It looked obscene sitting on the nightstand next to the water glass and the roll of medical tape.

"Mr. Falcone also had someone deliver this this morning. It's an alliance ceremony gown. He said it's been altered to your measurements and wanted you to try it on." She paused, smoothing the front of her apron. "Your ceremony is the day after tomorrow."

I turned my head to look at it. Once, a lifetime ago, I had imagined this moment. The dress arriving. The careful fitting. The promise of standing beside Dante at the altar of whichever cathedral his family favored, watched by the silent hierarchy of both houses. That girl felt like a stranger now, someone I could barely remember and no longer pitied. The gown lay in its tissue paper, and my heart felt completely cold.

Without saying much, I threw off the quilt and climbed out of bed. My legs ached. The wound on my shoulder pulled with every movement, a dull heat running down into my arm. I didn't even spare the dress another glance as I walked straight toward the door, leaving it boxed and ribboned like a gift no one had asked for.

As I stepped into the hallway, the floor was dark polished wood that reflected the wall sconces in long amber streaks. Serafina appeared at the far end, walking toward me. The moment she saw me, she froze. Her lower lashes fluttered once, too quickly, the reflex I had learned to read years ago as the hinge between whatever face she was wearing and whatever she actually meant. Then her expression settled into something familiar. Disdain. Mockery. The practiced cruelty of a girl who had been told since childhood that she was the daughter who counted.

"Well, well, Bianca. You really are something." Her voice carried through the corridor, pitched to be overheard by any staff within earshot. "You were hanging from a tree yesterday, but now you've somehow made Dante feel sorry for you? What's your plan now? Seduce him in a ceremony gown and ruin our marriage? I—"

I cut her off, my voice flat and stripped of anything she could use. "I don't care about the gown. I'll give it to you. I have no interest in fighting you for Dante. You'll be the one marrying him, not me."

Serafina was frozen by my words, completely caught off Neri. Her lips parted, and for half a second the mask slipped, something almost like confusion underneath it. She had come armed for a fight, and I had refused to meet her on the field. In this house, that was the only weapon I had left.

Ignoring her, I continued past without a backward glance. My body was still weak, the muscles in my legs trembling faintly with each step, but I forced myself down the stairs one by one, gripping the banister with my good hand. The front door of the Falcone estate was heavy oak banded with iron, a relic Dante's grandfather had supposedly brought from the old country. I pushed it open with my shoulder, and a cool breeze brushed against my face, clearing my head.

Dante's empty gestures and manufactured concern meant nothing to me now. The bandages, the gown, the instruction to take special care. They were set dressing. Props arranged around a girl he had already decided was expendable. What I needed wasn't to stay in this suffocating house, breathing the same air as people who traded daughters like territory. It was to prepare to leave in two days. And to make sure that everyone who had hurt me paid the price.

I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked along one edge from the courtyard, but it still worked. My fingers were steady as I typed the message to Sofia.

In two days, release all the evidence to every major media outlet. Immediately begin the network sabotage on every Moretti and Falcone front account. Freeze the clean-money channels first.

I sent it and watched the delivery confirmation appear. Then I made a promise to myself, standing on the Falcone threshold with the breeze pulling at the hem of my borrowed nightgown and the wound on my shoulder still seeping faintly through the gauze.

To the Moretti Family and the Falcone Family: I will make you pay.

Before I could put my phone back into my pocket, a hand suddenly clamped over my mouth and nose from behind. A strong, pungent chemical smell filled my nostrils, sweet and acrid at the same time, the kind of thing that burned the back of the throat before the darkness came. I tried to twist free, but my shoulder screamed and my grip on the phone failed. My vision spun. The gravel drive, the iron gate, the distant shape of the guardhouse all blurred into a single wash of grey, and then went black.

——

When I woke again, I was tied to a cold iron chair in a dark, damp room. The air smelled of standing water and old concrete, the kind of basement that existed beneath warehouses on the dockyards, the places men were taken when the Family wanted answers and silence in equal measure. My wrists were bound behind me with zip ties pulled tight enough to numb my fingers. The wound on my shoulder had reopened; I could feel the slow warmth of blood soaking through the gauze beneath my sleeve.

In the corner, Serafina was tied to a matching chair. She sobbed softly, her head bowed, her hair falling across her face. The sound was high and thin, practiced in a way I might not have noticed if I hadn't spent years listening to her rehearse tears in the next room.

Before I could even process what was happening, a tall man with a scar carved diagonally across his face walked toward us. The scar ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, puckered and white, the kind of wound that had been stitched by someone who didn't care how it healed. He moved with the loose confidence of a man who had done this before and expected to be well paid for it again. One knuckle rubbed slowly along the seam of the scar as he considered us both, as though he were running numbers in his head.

He casually picked up a phone from a table cluttered with tools I refused to look at, dialed a number, and turned on the speaker. The line rang twice.

"Mr. Falcone. Come now if you want to save your woman."

His voice was unhurried, almost conversational. The tone of a man discussing delivery logistics rather than human lives.

Ten minutes later, Dante burst into the room. He came through the door the way he always entered any space, expecting it to reorganize around him, but this time the room did not cooperate. His eyes swept from Serafina to me and back again, and panic flashed across his features, raw and uncontrolled, the first honest expression I had seen on his face in weeks. Two soldiers flanked the scarred man near the far wall, arms folded, faces blank. This was not Dante's territory. Here, his name carried no automatic weight.

Rocco Greco toyed with a dagger, turning it lazily between his fingers. The blade caught the single overhead bulb and threw a thin line of light across the ceiling. A cruel smile spread across his scarred face.

"I heard one of them is your promised bride. Here's a game for you." He gestured with the dagger, the point swinging between Serafina and me like a pendulum. "Choose one."

Dante froze. His mouth opened, but no words came out. His right hand moved involuntarily to the signet ring on his finger, turning it over the knuckle, back and forth, the metal catching the dim light. The hesitation filled the room like poison, thickening the air until even the two soldiers against the wall seemed to lean forward.

"I…" he stammered.

"Stop wasting time!" Rocco barked, the conversational ease gone in an instant, replaced by something blunt and impatient.

He grabbed both Serafina and me by the neck, one massive hand on each throat. His grip was practiced, the pressure exact, enough to cut the air without collapsing the windpipe. Not yet. Our breathing turned frantic and shallow. I felt my pulse hammering against his palm, felt the edges of my vision starting to grey at the borders.

"Dante! I'm scared! It hurts so much! Please, save me!"

Serafina's screams were high-pitched and desperate, echoing off the wet concrete walls. The sound filled the room, bouncing and multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. I said nothing. I watched Dante's face instead, watched the war playing out behind his eyes, and I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist where the zip tie allowed just enough movement, pressing until the pale crescent appeared, because I already knew.

Dante's fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. His eyes darted between us, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. The signet ring had stopped moving. He had made his decision.

Finally, he spoke, his voice trembling. "I choose to save Serafina."

The words landed in the silence like a stone dropped into deep water. Rocco released Serafina's throat and shoved her, chair and all, toward Dante's side of the room. Then he turned to me.

He yanked me forward by my hair, dragging me out of the chair with the zip ties still biting into my wrists, and shoved me toward a deep pool set into the concrete floor nearby. I hadn't seen it in the dark. The water was black and still and smelled of rust. Before I could draw a full breath, he forced my head under.

The icy water swallowed me whole. My lungs screamed for air. The cold was absolute, a fist closing around my chest, driving every thought from my head except the primal, animal need to breathe. It suffocated me, made me tremble, made every muscle in my body convulse against the hand holding me down.

Once. He dragged me up by the hair, let me gasp a single ragged breath, and shoved me under again.

Twice. The water flooded my nose, my mouth, filled my ears until the only sound was my own heartbeat and the muffled, distorted echo of someone laughing above the surface.

I was dragged up only to be forced back under until my consciousness began to fade, the darkness behind my eyes no longer the darkness of water but something deeper, something that didn't care whether I fought. Finally, they pulled me out and dumped me onto the cold, wet floor. I lay on the concrete gasping desperately, coughing and choking, my body curled in on itself as water streamed from my hair, my nose, the corners of my mouth. Each breath was a knife.

Rocco laughed, the sound low and cruel, and rubbed his knuckle along the scar one final time. "Mr. Falcone, you really are decisive."

Somewhere behind the roaring in my ears, I heard Serafina's sobs change pitch, just slightly. The desperation was gone. What replaced it was quieter, and if I hadn't been lying on the floor half-drowned and shaking, I might have missed it entirely. Relief. Satisfaction. The sound of a woman whose gamble had paid off exactly as planned.

Before I could recover, before I could do anything more than press my forehead to the wet concrete and force air into lungs that felt full of broken glass, the men dragged both Serafina and me to two large sealed iron cages at the far end of the room. The metal doors shrieked on their hinges. I was shoved inside, and the lock clicked shut with a sound that was quieter than it should have been, a small, precise finality, like the closing of a ledger.