Chapter 5

“I won’t tell.”

Giuliana Rossi looked at me as if I’d just told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. The safehouse infirmary was silent but for the machines, and in that silence her amusement felt obscene.

“How can I be sure you won’t say anything? If you do, Arthur will leave me!” Her eyes turned red as she spoke, that tearful gaze flicking sideways a half-beat too fast before she settled back into trembling.

“Only if you’re dead can I finally feel at ease!”

With that, a blade slipped from her sleeve and flashed toward me. I instinctively leaned back, falling straight onto my father’s unmoving body. Giuliana didn’t look soft at all. With the blade clenched between her fingers, she aimed directly for my throat.

But suddenly, a dry, pale hand caught her wrist. The monitors around us beeped erratically, filling the small room with a rising alarm.

The infirmary doctor had said that a man might wake if the machines cried out like that.

I whipped around in shock. “Dad?”

He didn’t open his eyes, but his hand firmly stopped Giuliana from hurting me. “No… you… touch… my… daughter,” came his hoarse, broken whisper. The old made-man, all that was left of him, still fighting.

I couldn’t believe it. His hand still held firm.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor fast, heavy and familiar. In a flash, Giuliana cut her own fingertip with the blade and slipped it into my father’s hand. Tears streamed down her face.

“Don’t kill me!”

The next second, Arthur Sinclair burst into the room. She flew into his arms like she’d found a life raft.

“Arthur! My sister’s father tried to kill me… I just heard he was waking and wanted to see him… Did Giuliana do something wrong?” Blood dripped from her fingertip, catching Arthur Sinclair’s eye. His face darkened instantly.

Without a word, he seized my wrist with an iron grip, nearly crushing it.

“You were going to get Giuliana killed again, weren’t you?!”

“I paid for your father’s care in this house all these years, and this is how you honor that debt?!”

I shook my head, panicked. “I didn’t! It wasn’t me…!”

Arthur’s smile twisted cold and cruel, like a demon from the underworld. “Yeah. Not you this time. It was your father.”

I felt my stomach sink. I dropped to my knees and bowed, forehead slamming against the floor.

“It wasn’t my dad! He’s just a vegetable, he doesn’t even know anything!”

“It was Giuliana! She tried to kill me! She—” But Giuliana interrupted with a sob. “I didn’t! You know about my blood condition, Arthur, you’ve always known…”

Then she clutched her forehead and staggered back, her performance flawless. Arthur glanced at her, jaw working, teeth grinding as his control frayed. He looked at the blade in my father’s limp hand, and his jaw clenched harder.

“Good. Very good…”

Without another word, he crossed to the bed and pulled the plug on my father’s respirator. The monitor screamed, a piercing beep ringing in my ears like a curse. No one touched a helpless elder. It was the oldest line in the code, and he had just stepped over it as if it were nothing.

I lunged forward and tried to reconnect it, but he shoved me away.

“Stop, Arthur, please, I’m begging you! My dad will die without the ventilator!”

“Hit me, kill me, do anything to me, but please don’t do this to him!”

Arthur stared down at me like I was dirt beneath his shoes.

“Dying is the easiest thing in the world.”

“Don’t think I don’t know a vegetable won’t die just because the machine’s off for ten minutes. I’m only punishing you.”

He pulled out his phone and called the house soldiers to cut power to the ward, this room alone, ten minutes exactly. Then he picked up Giuliana Rossi like she weighed nothing and turned back one last time.

“Tomorrow night. My wedding night. You come back and warm the bed.”

“If you don’t, just wait and see what happens!”

He walked out. I crawled to my father, crying, forcing air into his mouth. But it was useless.

Ten minutes later, the power returned. I reconnected the ventilator at once. The screen flickered, then steadied… Into a flat line.

He was gone. My dad, who had been left like a dog in that bed for years, was dead. I sat on the cold infirmary floor, arms wrapped around my knees, eyes swollen and burning from crying. I turned my mother’s cheap silver ring around my finger, once, slowly. Then the ring went still.

And then, I heard footsteps again. I looked up, my vision blurred.

“Do me a favor?” I whispered.

I didn’t know what I was trying to prove anymore. But Arthur Sinclair threw a wedding grander than I had ever dared to dream, a Family feast dressed as a celebration, every Don in the city seated beneath the chandeliers.

The bride’s gown shimmered, thousands of stitched gems dazzling under the lights.

When Arthur entered the grand hall, his gaze instinctively swept the crowd. But he didn’t find me in the seat that had been set aside for me.

The ceremony proceeded. The marriage oath was spoken. Applause filled the air. Then came the toast, ninety-eight daughters he had once collected like lots drawn from an arranged-union draw, all raising their glasses together.

He rarely asked questions. But this time, he did.

“Where is Giuliana?”

Serafina paused, thinking.

“You mean Sister Candidate One? I didn’t see her.”

Arthur frowned.

“She has a name. She isn’t just Candidate One.”

Serafina nodded, pressing her fingertips to her lips as if to catch the words already loosed, confused, and watched Arthur go.

It struck him then that Donna Vitale was the bride’s mother too. So he crossed the venue to find her.

Donna Vitale stood smiling, murmuring lightly into the phone with Mira Morello, stroking the pearls at her throat in slow, even passes.

“Aunt Jessy,” Serafina said politely, “why isn’t Giuliana here today?”

At the words, Donna Vitale and Mira Morello exchanged a strange, meaningful glance. Her fingers on the pearls quickened, just slightly.

And just like that, Arthur felt a jolt in his chest. An inexplicable pain.

The next second, Donna Vitale raised her phone. The dim screen lit, and what Arthur saw burned into his mind forever.