Serafina POV

The silence in the basement cell became a heavy, suffocating blanket.

Rosa appeared behind Carlo, pinching her nostrils between a thumb and forefinger.

"Look at them," she said, her voice dripping with contempt as she waved a dismissive hand at Sal and his wife. "She belongs with her own kind. Filth with filth."

A hot wetness spilled from my eyes and traced paths down my cheeks.

But it was not sorrow. It was the final, brittle fragment of hope for this family turning to ash and dissolving.

Sal lunged, his hand a claw on my arm, yanking me forward.

"Come on, brat," he grunted.

Isabella peeked out from behind Rosa, a smile of pure malice stretching her lips.

"Wait," Isabella's voice was sharp, imperious.

"Make her kiss the Capo's ring. Make her beg before she goes to the slums."

Carlo extended his hand, the heavy gold of his signet ring gleaming in the dim light.

Instead, I tore my arm from Sal's grasp.

I dropped to my knees on the cold, unforgiving concrete.

I did not reach for his hand. I placed both my palms flat on the floor and lowered my head until my forehead made contact with the stone.

It was the formal, traditional bow of severance—an irreversible severing of a blood tie.

"I renounce my Omertà," I said, my voice resonating with a calm that felt alien in my own throat.

"I sever my oath to the Falcone crew. The debt is cleared."

I pushed myself to my feet and walked past Carlo without a glance.

"Your debt is not paid!" Rosa shrieked at my retreating back.

I did not turn. I thought of the decade I spent hungry, locked away, shivering in the cold while Isabella was swaddled in warmth and praise.

My loyalty had been a worthless currency.

Outside, Sal shoved me into the passenger seat of a truck that smelled of rust and decay.

He drove in a grim silence to his squalid house, a festering sore in the deepest gutter of the slums.

The house was saturated with the odors of black mold and stale beer.

Sal pushed me into a tiny, frigid bathroom and the deadbolt slammed shut on the other side of the door.

"Stay in there and think about what you cost me!" his voice was a muffled bellow through the thin wood.

I curled into a ball on the grimy tile, wrapping my arms around my shins, my body a knot of misery.

By midnight, a violent tremor had seized my body. A lethal, scorching fever was racing through my veins.

I was burning from the inside out.

Through the paper-thin wall, I could hear Sal's wife pacing, her footsteps frantic.

"She's on fire!" the woman cried out. "She'll die in there, Sal. I'm calling the Capo."

I heard the dull, rhythmic tones of a number being dialed.

"Capo Falcone," the woman pleaded, her voice shaking. "The girl has a fever of one hundred and four. We need a doctor."

A sharp click, and Isabella's voice, amplified by the speakerphone, filled the small house.

"It's a trick," she laughed, the sound brittle and cruel. "She's acting."

"Let her rot," Carlo's voice was a sliver of ice. "She is cut off."

The line went dead with a flat, hollow tone.

They were leaving me here to die.

A primal instinct cut through the fog of delirium. I dragged my leaden, burning limbs to the kitchen's rusty back door. The woman's panicked voice from the other room masked the sound of my escape. The latch gave way with a groan, and I slipped out into the night. The air outside was like pulverized glass drawn into the lungs; my back molars clamped together of their own accord, emitting a dull, skeletal crack. I stumbled through the refuse and icy mud of the alley, my only thought to put distance between myself and that house.

The edges of my vision began to shrink, collapsing into a tunnel of black.

I fell to the slick, frozen pavement.

But just before the darkness consumed me, I saw a pair of shoes, the leather polished to a mirror shine, step out of the night and into the filth of the alley, stopping inches from my face.

The last thing I registered before my eyes closed was the faint scent of expensive cologne—cedar and gunpowder—and the quiet, measured voice of a woman saying, "Pick her up. Don Alessandro will want to see this one."