Chapter 3

The cellar was cold. Damp. The kind of dark that crawled under your skin.

Second time I'd been thrown down here.

The first time was still fresh.

I'd caught Mirella sneaking into Dante's wing of the estate at two in the morning. Found her curled up in his bed like she belonged there.

She broke down sobbing. Said she'd been sleepwalking. Said her foster father back in Sicily used to lock her in a closet at night, and ever since, her feet just carried her somewhere she felt safe. She didn't know it was Dante's bed. She didn't mean it. Please don't be mad.

My parents bought every word.

Dante crouched down in front of her like she was made of porcelain and told her, soft as silk, that his door was always open. Anytime she was scared.

Back then I was still out of my mind in love with him.

I wouldn't let a single woman near his office. Every female assistant on his floor got transferred out within a month. The only women allowed near him were the cleaning staff, and they had to be over fifty.

So I walked over and slapped Mirella across the face.

My father had me hauled down to this cellar that same night.

Seven days. One bowl of broth a day. No light, no blanket, no door cracking open.

They didn't drag me out until I was too weak to stand and I agreed to apologize on my knees.

This time, starvation wasn't the plan.

My father came down the stone steps with a riding crop in his hand. Dante walked in behind him.

"Family code says thirty for what you did. Mirella got down on her knees and begged me to go easy on you. She asked for the crop instead of the belt. So now it's fifty."

A pause. Then he raised his arm.

Crack.

The first lash tore a red welt across my back before I even felt it land.

He went again. And again. A dozen strikes in.

The welts split open one after another.

By the tenth, every blow was hitting raw meat. My skin was on fire and somehow numb at the same time.

The crop had been soaked in something. Even through the haze of pain, I could smell it. Vinegar. Salt. Some kind of brine.

So that's what begging for the crop really meant.

"Apologize to your sister."

"You going to apologize or not?"

He never got the answer he wanted, so he just hit harder.

By the time he counted to fifty, my back and the backs of my arms were open. Strips of skin hung loose. Blood ran down my spine and pooled on the stone floor underneath me.

I'd stopped feeling individual blows somewhere around twenty.

I curled into the corner, forehead against the cold stone, breathing in shallow gulps.

My father dropped the crop on the ground and turned for the stairs.

"Stubborn as a damn mule. Just like her grandmother."

That was all he said before he left.

Dante crouched in front of me.

"Mirella sent down ointment and a clean shirt. After everything you put her through, she's the one taking care of you."

"You're her sister, Aria. Act like it."

"Just apologize. End this."

He shook out the shirt Mirella had picked out for me.

Laid it across my back like he was doing me a kindness.

The second the fabric touched my open wounds, my whole body locked up like someone had thrown me into a barrel of salt.

I doubled over on the stone and couldn't breathe.

Mirella hadn't sent ointment. She'd dusted that shirt with something. The sting was deep, chemical, the kind that bit straight into raw skin.

I bit down on my tongue until I tasted iron just to keep from screaming.

Dante stood up and looked down at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

"Christ. The dramatics. Mirella's been white as a sheet from pain her whole life and you've never seen her put on a show like this."

He walked out.

I waited until I heard the cellar door slam upstairs before I let myself breathe.

Then I lay there on the cold stone, staring at the blood on my own hands, and counted.

Two more nights.

Two more nights and every last thing this Family had bled out of me was coming home.