Even though I could never win against Master's relentless coaxing, I still obediently took my medicine for six years. But he kept those words of mine close to his heart.

After I recovered, nothing sour or bitter ever appeared on my dinner table again.

I took the pot from Donna Vittoria's hands and, as if I couldn't feel the scalding heat, drank half the soup in one long gulp.

The remaining half I poured out beside Master's body.

I wiped my mouth. "Not bad, old man. But the blood mixed in makes it a little fishy."

"Have a taste yourself. Pay attention next time you make it."

That was what finally shattered Donna Vittoria's composure.

The tears she had held back for so long broke free all at once.

"Nara, there won't be a next time. Your master is dead!"

Oh, right. There wouldn't be a next time.

Fine. Since Master couldn't look after me anymore, it was my turn to protect him for once.

I unfastened the coat Master had sewn for me with his own hands and draped it over his body. My voice was calm. "Donna, watch over Master. Don't bury him."

"He'd be too lonely by himself. I'll find him some company for the grave."

Donna Vittoria couldn't stop me. All she could do was weep and beg me to come back alive.

I carried Mietitore and walked toward the Valente compound.

The chain-link gate of the Castellano yard groaned shut behind me, and somewhere in the distance, the low rumble of engines told me the compound perimeter was already on alert.

Valente soldiers rushed forward, blocking me outside the compound gates.

The one leading them was none other than my senior brother from the Castellano crew, Master's proudest protégé: Edoardo Castellano.

He stared at me in surprise, brow furrowed. His hand went to his tie, tugging it straight. "Nara, if you've come to seek the Boss's favor, you should keep your head down and your voice low."

"What's the point of making such a scene?"

I didn't bother looking at him. My eyes stayed fixed on the compound gates. "Tell Aldric Valente to come out."

"Tell him an old friend has come to visit."

Edoardo let out a weary sigh.

"Nara, have you lost your mind?"

"We're nobodies. Street kids from a nothing crew. If not for this stroke of fortune, how could we ever have been made and stood before the Boss of All Bosses?"

"'An old friend.' You're not embarrassed to say that out loud?"

Only then did I turn to look at Edoardo, each word falling like a stone. "You call Master's death a stroke of fortune?"

Edoardo faltered. A flicker of guilt surfaced in his eyes. His fingers went to his tie again, pulling at the knot, though it hadn't moved.

Rosalia Castellano, the second protégée, had just arrived. She flipped her hair over her left shoulder and rushed to Edoardo's defense the moment she saw his expression.

"Nara, how dare you speak to Edoardo that way?"

"Master's death wasn't our doing."

"If you want to blame someone, blame Master for holding those Original Oaths. We simply seized the opportunity that presented itself."

Looking at Rosalia's face, utterly devoid of remorse, all I felt was that Master had never been worth the love he gave them.

Edoardo and Rosalia were the first protégés Master ever took in.

He treated them no differently than he treated me.

He poured every ounce of his heart into raising them, even putting off having children of his own.

That was why, after all those years, Master and Donna Vittoria never had a child by blood.

Donna Vittoria would grumble about it from time to time, but that foolish old man would just laugh and wave it off. "It's fine. I trust my people. When the day comes, they'll see us properly buried."

He was wrong, in the end.

But I knew that foolish old man.

He believed, to his last breath, that people were born good. Whenever his protégés made mistakes, he always gave them a chance to make things right.

I never agreed with that. But I didn't want him to die with his eyes open, restless and unsettled.

So I did what Master would have done. I gave Edoardo and Rosalia one chance.

"I'll handle avenging Master myself. I don't need your help."

"Go back to the Castellano house now. Stay with Master and Donna Vittoria."

"Carry on Master's legacy. Make the crew what it should have been."

Rosalia had been spoiled rotten by Master since she was a child, and her temper was as foul as they came.

The second she caught the commanding tone in my voice, her face soured.

She shoved me, her voice shaking with fury. "Nara, who do you think you are?"

"How dare you speak to your senior brother and sister like that?!"

Edoardo stepped between us, his expression the picture of composed reason. One hand went to his tie, straightening it with a practiced tug. "Nara, don't be rash."

"The Castellano crew was always a small, unremarkable outfit. Massimo spent his entire life trying to make it flourish and never could. What chance would we have?"

"Besides, all of us have been made now. Isn't that a glory the crew can be proud of?"

He reached out and took hold of my arm.

"Come now, be good. I'll take you to see the Boss. I'll make sure you get a fine position in the organization..."

But before the last word left his mouth, my stiletto was already buried in his chest.

Edoardo never even had time to react. He crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and glassy, dead before he hit the stone.

Every Valente soldier in the vicinity went rigid with shock. Weapons cleared leather, all trained on me.

Rosalia stumbled back two steps, her face white. "Nara, what kind of cursed thing are you holding?!"

She asked because Edoardo had already been made. The protection of the Valente name shielded him.

An ordinary blade couldn't have gotten within arm's reach before a dozen soldiers cut you down.

So in her mind, my weapon had to be something unholy.

I raised the stiletto, letting the light catch its edge. My voice was flat and cold. "Cursed? No common killer is worthy of wielding this."

"But you'll find out what it is soon enough."

I crouched beside Edoardo's body and drew the blade across his chest, slow and deliberate, blooding the steel.

"Since our dear senior brother had no loyalty to speak of, his blood might as well serve a better purpose. A blood offering for my blade."

"Nara, you vicious monster!"

Rosalia's eyes went red with rage. She pulled a gun from beneath her jacket and lunged toward me.

But at the critical moment, a Valente soldier beside her seized her arm and hauled her back, his hand trembling as he pointed at the stiletto hovering over Edoardo's body, the black handle slick and gleaming.

"Lady Rosalia, look. Your junior sister's blade... something's wrong with it. It's drinking the blood on its own."

Rosalia didn't care. She scoffed, flipping her hair over her left shoulder. "Old weapons never play by the rules. What's so strange about that?"

The soldier shook his head frantically. "No, you don't understand. You've only just been made."

"In all the generations since the families first formed, there has only ever been one blade that craves the blood of made men..."

Rosalia blinked, clueless. "What blade?"

The soldier's lips trembled around one word: "Mietitore."

Rosalia's jaw dropped. The color drained from her face.

But before she could gather her wits, a voice split the air from somewhere above the compound walls, heavy with authority that needed no anger to terrify.

"Silence!"

"I destroyed the Ferro heir with my own hands. Mietitore was shattered by my order. It no longer exists."

"You will not spread such baseless fear!"

I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat. Aldric Valente. My enemy for as long as I had drawn breath.

And the one who had wounded me deepest of all.

He was right about one thing. I was the Ferro heir he claimed to have destroyed.

I was also the only other true power that had emerged from the Old Country alongside him, the only one who had survived the annihilation of the original families.

The year the old dynasty was wiped out, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.

For years after that, Aldric treated me well.

The Ferro bloodline breeds cold. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.

Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Old Country.

So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Commission's stronghold, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.

Years as husband and wife. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.

Until Aldric met a civilian woman, and everything veered off course.

That woman was Elara, the one he now called his wife.

Elara was flesh and bone, a nobody from outside the families. She could not set foot in the Commission's inner world. The only way was to replace the nothing inside her with real power, with the leverage and legacy of a true dynasty.

Aldric searched every corner of the organization and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.

So he turned his attention to me.

He deliberately let the other families discover my true identity as the Ferro heir, then rallied every crew, every capo, every soldier in the three tiers of the underworld under the banner of justice to pin me down. They called it a cleansing. They called it restoring order. What it was, was a hit sanctioned by every man who owed Aldric Valente a favor.

I was already pregnant by then. My body had weakened, and I had no strength left to fight back.

I begged him to spare me. Begged until my voice broke. But all he left me with was a single, weightless phrase: The family cannot harbor what threatens it. Then he tore the Ferro Ledger from my hands, stripped me of every alliance, every debt, every ounce of leverage I had ever held, and put a bullet through the life I'd built.

Even Mietitore was snapped in half and ground under his heel.

It was the child in my womb who saved me.

He sacrificed his own life to keep my shattered body from giving out completely, his tiny heartbeat holding mine together just long enough.

After a long silence, I reformed into a physical body, but only that of a two-year-old child. A girl with no name, no family, no blood anyone would claim.

My heart was full of hatred. I knew I was no match for Aldric, yet I still set out on the road to the Commission's stronghold to take my revenge.

But my bones had barely knit and my leverage had yet to coalesce. I couldn't even fend off a street thug looking for an easy mark.

Just as a man with a knife was about to finish what Aldric had started, a pair of large hands scooped me into a warm embrace.

The old man whose eyes already creased with wrinkles looked down at me, heartache plain on his face. "How's a little thing like you out here all alone with nobody looking after you?"

"Don't be scared, sweetheart. This old man will keep you safe."

I assumed his kindness was a passing impulse. I never imagined he would go on protecting me for years.

The year I pieced Mietitore back together, I was nine. I reforged the broken blade myself, heating the steel over a gas burner in the back of Massimo's shop, working the metal with hands too small for the hammer. Tore found me there at three in the morning and said nothing. He simply sat down, took the hammer from me, and held the blade steady while I shaped it.

I planned to make one last trip to the Commission's stronghold and drag Aldric down with me, even if it killed us both.

But the night before I meant to leave, my master brought me a beggar's chicken. It wasn't particularly good.

He had no idea I was planning to go. He just scratched the back of his head, embarrassed, and said, "Nara, you haven't been eating well lately. You're getting too thin. I went all the way across town to learn this recipe from a famous cook on Mulberry Street."

"Go on, try it. If it's no good, I'll go back and learn again."

"And if you like it, I'll make it for you every single day."

I blinked, caught off guard. Suspicion crept in before I could stop it. "Why are you so good to me?"

My master stroked his chin and smiled. "Because I think of you as my own daughter."

"If my little girl starved, what kind of father would I be? I'd be heartbroken."

"I'm already old. I don't want to spend whatever years I have left crying my eyes out."

In that moment, looking at the white hairs that had grown in from worrying over me, I felt the walls around my heart crack for the first time in years.

So there was someone in this world who loved me after all.

All at once, I didn't want revenge anymore.

I buried Mietitore beneath the fig tree in the courtyard and buried all my hatred along with it.

But Aldric shattered my hard-won peace with his own hands, all over again, and dug my hatred back up from the roots.

I lifted my gaze toward the balcony where his voice had come from and spoke, each word deliberate and distinct. "Aldric. It's been a long time."

Before the last syllable faded, the heavy doors of the Commission chamber swung open.

In the space of a breath, Aldric Valente descended the marble stairs with Elara Abbiati on his arm.

He looked exactly the same as before. That face, carved clean and cold enough to ruin empires, hadn't aged a single day. The suit was different. The ring on his left hand was not. I knew that ring. I had placed it there myself.

The woman cradled against him glowed with the same vitality.

Aldric looked me up and down, his brow furrowing. "I have never laid eyes on you. What do you mean, 'a long time'?"

Oh. I had almost forgotten. After my body reformed, my appearance had changed completely.

No wonder he didn't recognize me.

But my attention wasn't on him. Every ounce of it was fixed on Elara, and I had no patience to spare for Aldric.

I stared at Elara, unblinking. "You're looking well. Rosy cheeks, bright eyes. My master's bones must be serving you nicely."

Back then, the Ferro Ledger had only granted Elara passage in and out of the Valente compound, a guest pass to the world she craved. Without the Original Oaths, she still could not be elevated. She could attend, but she could not rule.

Aldric had once considered taking my own leverage instead, but the full weight of the Ferro dynasty's accumulated debts and blood oaths was far more than a civilian woman like Elara could wield. The network would have crushed her. He'd been forced to abandon the idea.

It had taken him all these years of searching to finally find my master's Original Oaths, the perfect instrument for Elara's ascension. A neutral elder's custody documents, clean enough for her hands, powerful enough to legitimize her permanently.

My words landed, and understanding dawned across Aldric's face.