Chapter 1

I was the most untouchable daughter in the Moretti family.

Then my brother Eli had me locked in the farm's lower cellar under the name of "family correction."

I slept on concrete for three solid months.

Every day I fought rats for whatever scraps they threw through the slot.

If I resisted, the men would hold my head in a barrel of cold water, or press a cattle prod against my ribs.

The only thing that kept me alive was the mute errand boy who brought my meals.

He would slip me antibiotics in secret, sit quietly while I sobbed and begged him to get me out.

He even promised to help me escape.

I swore that when I got out, I would tell my brother: I've learned my lesson. I'm not the same anymore.

Then one day I collapsed on the stone floor with a fever so high my heart gave out.

I was convulsing in the dark when I watched the mute man pull off his hood and peel away the fake scar beneath it.

The face underneath was Sebastian's. My fiancé.

"This is what you get for slipping something into Zara's drink. Even if it was just a laxative."

"Consider three months in a cellar a fair trade for the scare you gave her."

"Kill the feed, Marco. Zara says watching me work this hard is breaking her heart."

I watched Sebastian take Zara's hand and walk toward the stairs.

My heart stopped.

I drifted upward, floating above the stone floor, looking down at my own body.

Covered in filth. Dirt packed under every fingernail.

"Cut." Marco's voice cracked with satisfaction.

"Perfect — absolutely perfect. That dying look in her eyes is incredible!"

"Get me a close-up. The Don will want to see this."

Every camera in the cellar swung toward my face at once.

A pair of polished oxfords appeared beside my head. Sebastian.

He pressed a handkerchief over his nose and looked down at me with contempt.

"Okay. Stop performing. Marco already called it — why are you still on the ground?"

"Getting too deep into it?"

My body rocked slightly as he nudged it with his foot. No response.

"Ava Moretti." Sebastian frowned.

"Are you seriously holding your breath this long just to milk the sympathy angle?"

"Three months in a cellar really did expand your lung capacity."

I floated above him, screaming into the nothing.

"I'm not performing! Sebastian — I'm actually dead! Look at me!"

"Don't be too hard on her, Sebastian."

A black umbrella opened over his head. Zara Cole stepped around the drain and took his arm.

"She really was trying her best this time to make it up to me."

"Look at the state of her. So grimy — someone who didn't know better would think she actually lived down here."

She said it lightly, her eyes skimming over my body on the ground.

A slow clap started somewhere nearby. My brother — Eli Moretti, heir to the family, the man every underboss in the city answered to — stepped out from behind the monitor.

He looked down at my corpse from above.

"Not bad. Three months and she actually got better at this."

He turned to Marco.

"Pull that footage and cut it into the reel. Title it: A Moretti Daughter's Confession."

"That last moment — the best thing she's ever put on camera."

"I almost believed her."

Looking at my brother, something tore open inside me.

Eli. This isn't an act.

I'm in real pain. Real, actual… pain. I'm dying.

"Eli," Marco asked quietly, "do we… wake the Miss now?"

"Don't let her track that filth into my car. It's disgusting." Eli barely glanced at me.

"It'll make Zara sick — she's been under the weather."

"Then…"

"Wrap her in a tarp and put her in the trunk."

"Since she's so committed to playing dead, she can stay in character the whole ride home."

"Saves me from listening to whatever speech she had planned."

The men scrambled to obey.

I watched two of them lift my stiff body and fold it into a plastic tarp.

Sebastian was already fixing Zara's rain-damp hair. He didn't glance at me once.

The trunk slammed shut. The engine turned over.

My head hit the spare tire with a dull thud.

I floated beside myself in the dark, and felt something almost like the urge to laugh.

I remembered being eighteen — I bumped my head on a car door once, left a small red mark.

Eli saw it and didn't say a single word before he picked up a tire iron and destroyed the car.

"Anything that hurts my little sister," he'd said, "doesn't deserve to exist."

And now my corpse was rattling around in the trunk of his car.

Was that all an act too, Eli?

Or is it simply that the moment Zara Cole walked into our lives, your own sister stopped being worth keeping?

Zara turned from the front passenger seat and glanced toward the trunk.

"Eli, do you think Ava will be upset with us for putting her back there when she wakes up?"

Eli watched the road, the trunk's direction a flicker in his rearview mirror.

He let out a short, cold breath.

"She doesn't get to be upset. I have plenty of ways to keep her quiet once we're home."

"The family sit-down is already set for tomorrow."

"If she dares cause a scene, I'll ship her back to that cellar for another three months."

From the back seat, Sebastian added without looking up:

"She'd better behave."

"Zara spent three days in the hospital over what Ava put in her drink."

"Three months is the bare minimum."

I drifted along the ceiling of the car, watching the three of them.

I never put anything in Zara's drink.

Zara stole my heart medication and took it herself, then turned around and told everyone I tried to poison her.

No one believed me. And now I can't explain it to anyone, ever again.

The car bounced along the mountain road, my body knocking against the trunk walls the whole way.

When the car finally rolled through the gates of the Moretti estate, Eli popped the trunk and dragged the tarp out himself, one of the housemen taking the other end.

One step. Two. Three.

My head hit every stone step on the way up. The sound echoed sharp and hollow in the rain.

My soul flinched. I reached out instinctively to shield my own skull — and my hands passed through the air.

"Heavy," Eli muttered, disgusted.

"If she's going to play dead, the least she could do is lose some weight."

He dragged the tarp into the main hall and let it drop onto the marble floor.

The wrap tore open. My face, caked in filth, lips turning purple, eyes sealed shut, was exposed to the light.

Eli stood over me and nudged my leg with his foot.

"We're home. Drop the act. Go clean up and don't get the floors dirty."

I want to, Eli. I really do. But I can't.

Zara curled closer to Sebastian and murmured:

"Did Ava actually pass out? Her color looks… wrong."

"That's the cold." Sebastian cut her off.

"She was down there three months. Her circulation is shot."

"She fakes this all the time to get out of things."

"The doctor said her health is fine — she can handle it."

Eli's patience ran out.

He crossed the room, turned the thermostat down to its lowest setting, and walked away.

"Fine. She wants to lie there — let her lie there."

"Nobody touches her or gives her a blanket tonight. We'll see how long this lasts."

The three of them went upstairs.

Only the cold air remained, moving slowly over my body on the floor.

I floated above myself — above that small, alone shape on the marble — and I wanted to cry.

But ghosts don't have tears.