Gianna POV

Pain has a taste.

It tastes like copper and bile.

I woke because the burning across my back was louder than the oblivion I craved. It felt as though every inch of skin from my shoulders to my waist had been flayed open, leaving raw nerve endings exposed to the air.

I was lying on my stomach in my bed. Someone had moved me from the dungeon.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled and gave way. I collapsed back into the silk sheets, gasping as the movement stretched the raw wounds on my back like tearing fabric.

"You're awake."

The voice was light. Airy. Like a child who had just found a new toy.

I turned my head.

Sofia was sitting at the vanity. My vanity. She was applying my lipstick, smacking her lips together to test the shade in the mirror.

"Get out," I croaked. My throat felt lined with glass shards.

"Dante said you needed rest," she said, spinning around on the stool. "But I told him I wanted to check on my sister."

"We are not sisters."

"We are now," she smiled. It was a cold, empty smile that didn't reach her eyes. "We share everything. His house. His name. His attention."

She stood up and walked toward the bed. She was holding something in her hand.

A bundle of wire.

No. Not wire.

Strings.

My steel cello strings.

My stomach lurched.

"You know," she said, twirling the metal coils around her fingers. "I always hated the sound of that thing. It was so... mournful. Like a dying cat."

She sat on the edge of the mattress. Her weight pulled the sheets tight against my flayed skin, sending a fresh wave of agony down my spine. I flinched.

"Dante is gone," she whispered. "He went to the Commission meeting. He won't be back for hours."

"What do you want?"

"I want to make sure you understand the hierarchy here."

She reached out and grabbed my left hand. The hand that pressed the strings. The hand that created the music.

"Dante broke your spirit downstairs," she said. "But you still have this arrogance about you. You still think you are better than me because you are a Vitiello."

"I am better than you," I spat. "Because I don't need to steal someone else's life to have one."

Sofia's face twisted.

She coiled the steel A-string around my index finger.

"You saved him in the cave," she said softly.

My heart stopped.

"You know?"

"Of course I know," she laughed, a hollow, tinkling sound. "I found his journal years ago. He wrote about the girl's voice. About the song. I just... adapted the story. I made it mine."

"He will find out."

"He won't. Because he believes what he wants to believe. And he wants to believe I am his destiny."

She pulled the string tight.

The steel bit into my flesh.

"Stop," I gasped.

"You use these fingers to play, don't you?" she asked.

She yanked.

I screamed.

The string sliced through the skin, grinding down to the bone. Blood sprayed onto the white duvet.

"Stop it!" I tried to pull my hand back, but she was strong. Fueled by a manic, jealous strength.

She wrapped the string around my middle finger.

"This is for slapping me," she hissed.

The wire sang.

Slice.

"And this is for trying to take him from me."

Slice.

I was sobbing now, the pain in my hand rivaling the fire on my back. My fingers were mangled, bleeding freely. The nerves were severed. I could feel the loss of sensation, the death of my music.

"Why?" I wept. "You have him. You have everything. Why take this?"

"Because you love it," she said simply. "And you aren't allowed to love anything but pain."

She dropped my bloody hand. She stood up and wiped her palms on her dress as if dusting off crumbs.

"Where is Mia?" I asked. I needed to know. "Is she alive?"

Sofia paused at the door. She looked back over her shoulder.

"Oh, the maid?" she giggled. "She was so noisy in the dungeon. Screaming your name. Begging for mercy."

Ice filled my veins.

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything," Sofia said innocently. "But Dante's men... they have rules about rats. Rats shouldn't talk."

She tapped her lips.

"So they took her tongue."

The world tilted on its axis.

"And then they realized she was useless without it," she continued. "So they put a bullet in her head and dumped her in the landfill south of the city."

A sound tore out of me. It wasn't human. It was the sound of a wounded animal realizing it was cornered and dying.

Mia. My Mia.

She was dead. Mutilated and discarded like trash because of me.

"Sleep tight, Principessa," Sofia said.

She closed the door.

I lay in the pool of my own blood.

The tears stopped. The sobbing stopped.

Something inside my chest, the frantic, beating thing that had hoped for salvation, finally stopped moving.

It died.

And in its place, something cold and sharp began to grow.

I was still paralyzed, my gaze locked on the ruin of my hand, when the door exploded inward.

Splinters of mahogany became shrapnel, showering the room.

Men in tactical gear swarmed the suite like a tide of black oil. They wore combat armor, but the crest on their chests wasn't the Moretti wolf.

It was the Vitiello lion.

"Clear!" a voice shouted.

Then he walked in.

Luca.

My brother. The Capo dei Capi.

He looked like war personified. He held an assault rifle at the low ready, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me.

His expression didn't change, but the air in the room seemed to freeze, the temperature plummeting.

He strode to the bed. He saw the blood soaking the sheets. He saw the flayed skin of my back. He saw my hand.

He gently touched my wrist, his calloused fingers hovering over the deep cuts where the bone gleamed white.

"Who did this?" he asked. His voice was terrifyingly quiet.

"Sofia," I whispered.

"And the back?"

"Dante."

Luca closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, they were voids devoid of light.

"Get the medic," he ordered his men. "Prepare her for transport."

"Mia..." I grabbed his tactical vest with my good hand, desperate. "Luca, Mia is dead. They killed her. They cut out her tongue."

Luca's jaw tightened until the muscle feathered. "We will find her."

"She's in the landfill," I choked out. "Sofia told me."

"Luca!"

Dante's voice roared from the hallway.

He appeared in the doorway, his own men behind him, guns drawn. The hallway became a powder keg. Vitiello soldiers against Moretti soldiers.

Dante looked at Luca, then at me.

He saw the blood dripping from my hand. He frowned.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dante demanded. "You do not storm my house."

"You broke the treaty," Luca said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. "You tortured a Vitiello. You maimed her."

"I disciplined my wife," Dante snapped. "It is an internal matter."

"Look at her hand," Luca commanded, pointing the barrel of his rifle toward my injury. "Is that discipline?"

Dante looked closer. He saw the sliced fingers. The specific, cruel nature of the wounds.

"I didn't order that," Dante said, his voice faltering. He looked confused. "I ordered lashes."

"Sofia did it," I said. My voice was hollow. "She came in. She used cello strings. She told me she had Mia killed."

Dante looked at me, then back at the hallway where Sofia was cowering behind his legs.

"That isn't true," Sofia cried. "I was in the kitchen! I was making tea!"

"She is lying," Luca said. He raised his rifle, aiming it directly at Sofia's head. "She dies. Now."

"No!" Dante stepped in front of her.

He put his body between the bullet and the girl.

"Move, Dante," Luca warned. "She mutilated my sister. She executed a made guy's daughter. She dies."

"She is under my protection," Dante said. "If you shoot her, you start a war."

"Then let it be war," Luca said.

He disengaged the safety with a loud click.

"Gianna is my wife," Dante said, his voice hard. "But Sofia... Sofia is my blood. She is everything to me. You will not touch her."

I watched them.

My husband, shielding the woman who had just crippled me. Shielding the woman who murdered my best friend.

He knew. Deep down, he had to know she did it. The evidence was written in my blood.

But he didn't care.

His obsession was stronger than his honor. Stronger than the truth.

"Take me home, Luca," I said.

The silence in the room was heavy, suffocating.

"I am taking her," Luca said to Dante. "And I am killing the girl."

"You can take Gianna," Dante said. "But if you fire that gun, none of you leave this estate alive."

Luca looked at Dante with pure disgust.

"You are a fool, Moretti. You are trading a queen for a whore."

"I am trading a contract for a soul," Dante replied.

I closed my eyes.

He really believed that. He believed she was his soul.

"Pack her up," Luca ordered his men, turning his back on the man who was supposed to protect me. "We are leaving."

We stood in the center of the courtyard, where the falling snow worked tirelessly to bury the bloodstains on the cobblestones-the remnants of Dante's men trying to halt Luca's entry.

Around us, the engines of the SUVs idled, a low, mechanical growl cutting through the winter air.

Luca held me securely in his arms.

He carried me because my legs refused to hold my weight.

The pain in my back was no longer just an injury; it was a living, parasitic thing, pulsing in time with every beat of my heart.

But we weren't leaving yet.

Dante stood like a sentinel by the gate.

His entire army fanned out behind him, and I could feel the eyes of snipers perched on the roof, tracking our movements.

"You don't just walk away from a marriage," Dante stated, his voice flat. "The Commission won't sanction this."

"The Commission will see the photos of her back," Luca countered, his grip on me tightening. "They will see her hand. They will grant the annulment before the ink is dry."

"I hold a debt," Dante announced.

He produced a coin from his pocket.

It was heavy gold, stamped with the Vitiello crest on one face and the Moretti wolf on the reverse.

It was an ancient obligation. A life debt owed by my father to his father.

"I am calling it in," Dante said.

Luca froze.

"You are invoking a Blood Debt?" Luca asked, incredulous. "To keep a wife you clearly hate?"

"No," Dante replied.

He looked down at Sofia, who was clinging to his arm like a vine.

"I am using the debt to buy immunity for Sofia. You cannot touch her. Not today. Not ever. The Vitiello family cannot hunt her."

Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic.

He wasn't trying to keep me.

He was utilizing the most powerful currency in our world to ensure I couldn't get justice for my hand.

For Mia.

He was purchasing her safety with the currency of my suffering.

"Done," Luca spat, the word tasting of ash. "The debt is paid. Sofia lives. But Gianna leaves."

"Fine," Dante said.

He didn't even look at me.

"Take her. She is useless to me now anyway."

Useless.

Because I couldn't play. Because I was broken.

I let my head fall against Luca's chest.

"Wait," I whispered.

"Gianna, we need to go," Luca urged, sensing the volatility of the air.

"My cello," I rasped. "The broken one. I want it."

"It is trash," Dante called out, dismissive.

"It is mine," I insisted.

One of Luca's men sprinted back inside.

He returned a moment later, clutching the battered case.

He slid it into the trunk of the waiting SUV.

I looked at Dante one last time.

He looked powerful. Untouchable. The Ice Prince reigning over his kingdom of snow.

But to me, he looked small.

"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered, though the wind snatched my voice away before it could reach him.

He turned his back on me to comfort Sofia.

I vomited then-blood and stomach acid splattering onto the pristine wool of Luca's coat.

"Get her in the car!" Luca shouted, his voice distorting. "She's crashing!"

The world dissolved into black.

When I surfaced from the darkness, the steady hum of jet engines was the only sound.

I was hooked up to an IV, the clear fluid dripping rhythmically.

My hand was heavily bandaged.

Luca sat beside me, his eyes scanning a file.

"Mia?" I asked, my voice a ruin.

Luca looked at me.

His eyes held a profound sadness.

"We couldn't find the body, Gianna. The landfill... it's vast."

He was lying.

I could tell.

He wanted to spare me the details. Or perhaps he didn't want me to know he hadn't looked because of the immunity deal.

It didn't matter.

She was gone.

I looked out the window at the bed of clouds beneath us.

I was going to the Hamptons. To neutral ground.

I was free.

But looking down at my bandaged hand, I knew the truth.

I wasn't free.

I was just a survivor of a war I never knew I was fighting.