After fifteen years away, I was finally brought back to the DeLuca family.

I thought I was returning to my real home.

Instead, I walked into a house where the adopted daughter wanted me dead, my father treated me like a burden, and my brothers would rather watch me bleed than make her cry.

On my first day back, she set dogs on me.

That night, I was dragged to the top of the observatory and forced to apologize to her.

When I fell from the tower covered in blood, they still called me a liar.

Because in the DeLuca family, I may have been the real daughter by blood—

but she was the daughter they loved.

She thought she could bully me, poison me, and freeze me to death without consequence.

She was wrong.

Because the night I nearly died, my mother finally chose me—and turned a gun on the whole DeLuca family.

When I forced my eyes open, all I could see was red.

Blood clung to my lashes and my throat felt packed with broken glass. I tried to speak, but my chest seized before a sound could come out, and a mouthful of dark blood spilled over my lips.

“Yvette!”

My mother’s voice cracked on my name. Veronica DeLuca was not a woman who lost control. But when she dropped to the ground and gathered me into her arms—

“Baby, look at me.” She brushed the blood from my mouth with trembling fingers. “Stay with me. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

Above us, at the rail of the glass tower, Kane leaned out and looked down like he was already sick of the whole scene.

“Mom, don’t fall for this,” he called. “She jumped on purpose to pin it on Sofia. It’s two stories, for Christ’s sake. Nobody dies from a fall like that.”

Sofia stood half behind him, pale and watery-eyed at exactly the right moment.

“This is all my fault,” she sobbed. “If I hadn’t taken her place, she wouldn’t have gotten so upset. Kane, please stop. I shouldn’t even be here.”

My mother lifted her head. “Shut up.”

My oldest brother, Leon, had just come in from the outer grounds. The moment he saw me, he stopped short.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he said, frowning. “She walked up there on her own.”

I could feel myself slipping farther away with every second. I had been back at the DeLuca estate less than a day, and I was going to die here.

Pain ripped through me in waves. The family doctor came running with his case, hit his knees beside me, and pressed two fingers to my neck.

His face drained at once.

“Mrs. DeLuca…” he said hoarsely. “Her pulse is gone.”

The courtyard fell still.

My father moved first. Roland DeLuca grabbed the doctor by the lapels and nearly hauled him off the ground.

“What the hell are you talking about? You just stabilized her.”

The doctor swallowed hard. “Miss DeLuca already has severe congenital cardiopulmonary complications and a clotting disorder. She bled earlier today after being startled. Then she was dragged up there into the wind and fell from the tower. A healthy person might not survive that sequence. In her condition…” He couldn’t finish.

My mother bit down so hard on her lip a bead of blood appeared. Then she reached to a guard at her side, drew his gun in one smooth motion, and jammed the barrel against my father’s throat.

“Roland DeLuca,” she said, each word clipped and sharp, “I carried my daughter for ten months. I found her again, and on her first day home, your sons nearly killed her.”

“If Yvette dies tonight, I’ll bury this whole family with her.”

Kane had come down by then, Sofia at his side. The look on his face finally changed.

“Mom, are you out of your mind?” he snapped. “You’re pulling a gun on us over some girl you barely know?”

Sofia dropped to her knees at once.

“Please don’t do this,” she whispered. “If someone has to be blamed, blame me. Don’t hurt Father. Don’t hurt my brothers.”

Something hot and vicious tore through me at the sound of her voice.

My heart, which had been falling into silence, slammed once against my ribs as if rage had dragged it back by force. I sucked in a ragged breath and stared straight at her.

“There,” the doctor shouted. “She’s responding. Get me the shot, now. And oxygen—move!”

My mother let the gun fall to her side and bent over me again, tears slipping down her face unchecked.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered. “Nobody is touching you again.”

I caught at her sleeve with the last of my strength. My vision had already started to dim.

“Mom,” I whispered. “I’m cold.”

Then I looked past her shoulder, straight at Kane.

“Kane pushed me. The steps were slick. Sofia set it up.”

After that, the dark swallowed me whole.

The last thing I heard was my mother’s voice, stripped down to pure command.

“Take Kane,” she said. “Right now.”

I woke three days later under a dark gold canopy, with antiseptic and medicine thick in the air.

My throat was so dry it felt scorched. I tried to lift my hand and discovered even my fingers were weak. My mother was sitting by the bed.

In three days she seemed to have aged ten years. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her face hollowed with exhaustion. When she saw my eyes open, she lurched to her feet so quickly she nearly stumbled.

“Yvette.” She turned toward the door. “Get the doctor—”

“Did Kane deny it?”

The second the words left me, pain sliced across my chest, and blood rose hot and metallic into my mouth. A thin line of it slipped from the corner of my lips.

Her face crumpled. She snatched up a handkerchief and wiped it away.

“Don’t worry about him right now. You’re losing too much blood. Your old lung injury flared up again. Your rhythm still won’t settle. The doctors said from now on it’ll be specialists, machines, and the best drugs money can buy. One wrong shock and—”

Footsteps sounded outside.

My father came in with Leon and Kane. Kane’s side was wrapped in heavy bandages. But the second he saw me, hatred flashed across his face.

“You really milked this, didn’t you? You throw yourself off a tower, blame Sofia, and somehow I’m the one who gets whipped for it.”

Leon, standing beside him, wore the same expression he might have used with an unreliable subordinate.

“Sofia hasn’t slept in days, and She can barely eat. Since you’re awake now, Yvette, maybe it’s time you went and cleared this up with her so we can all move on.”

I looked at them and saw worry for Sofia, irritation at the scandal, and not one ounce of shame for what had happened to me.

My mother laughed, a sound so cold.

“My daughter nearly died in this house, and you want her to apologize to the girl who set all of this in motion?”

My father’s jaw tightened.

“Sofia is not some girl,” he said. “She has been a DeLuca for fifteen years. She is my daughter. Yvette may share my blood, but she was raised somewhere else and brought back every bad habit that comes with it. She has done nothing since arriving but turn this house upside down.”

I said nothing.

Kane mistook my silence for guilt. He strode to the bed and pointed straight in my face.

“What, no act this time? Listen to me. I don’t care what name you carry. Sofia is the only real daughter this family has. You? You’re poison.”

I looked at him for a long second.

My face went red with anger. A cough broke out of me the next second.

Then the spasm slammed into me full force, tearing up from my lungs so violently my shoulders folded in on themselves. I bent over the blankets, shaking, each breath shorter than the one before.

Kane let out a disgusted laugh.

“Oh, here we go again. You think coughing up a little blood means everybody has to—”

He never finished.

I lurched forward and spat a thick mouthful of black-purple blood all over his face and shirt.

The smell of iron hit the room at once. Kane froze, eyes wide, then stumbled back with a shout and crashed to the floor.

My mother shoved past Leon and caught me before I slid sideways.

“Doctor!” she shouted. “Now!”

Then she turned on Kane.

“Drag him out,” she said. “Break his legs.”

Guards flooded the room before my father could stop them. They hauled Kane down as he thrashed and shouted.

“Dad! Leon!”

My father took a step forward, furious. “Veronica—”

She cut him off by yanking a black-and-gold medallion from beneath her collar and holding it up between them.

Every person in the room knew what it meant. It was a Visconti arbitration seal, recognized by the Commission itself. The DeLucas still sat where they sat because the Viscontis had allowed it.

“My brother gave me this for a reason,” my mother said. “You say one more word, Roland, and I’ll use the Visconti name to wipe DeLuca off the books.”

No one spoke after that.

The doctors worked on me for two hours before the numbers on the monitors stopped diving.

“She’s critical,” he told my mother. “The fall already damaged her organs. That scene just now triggered another hemorrhage and several dangerous rhythm crashes. We can keep treating her, but at this point it’s maintenance, not recovery. Whether she lasts weeks, months, or less... that won’t be up to us.”

My mother sat down like all the bones had gone out of her body.

After that she cleared the room and kept watch beside me alone.

Outside, the estate remained anything but quiet.

Kane was being punished in the lower courtyard. I could hear every crack of the metal rod and every scream that followed. Sofia was kneeling in the rain, begging for mercy on his behalf. My father and Leon were both out there too.

“Veronica!” my father roared through the storm. “Are you really going to burn the house down over someone who’s already halfway dead?”

“Kane is your son!”

I opened my eyes and looked at my mother. Her face was worn raw with grief.

“Mom, Let it go.”

“I’m not going to last long anyway. Don’t destroy yourself fighting them for me.”

“Send me somewhere else. Anywhere. I don’t want to stay here and be in their way.”

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“You are my daughter,I did not search for you all these years just to let them hurt you.”

Then she stood, crossed the room, and opened the door.

Everyone in the courtyard went still.

“Roland, if this is what you think of me, then we’re done.”

Rain drummed against the stone. No one moved.

“Tomorrow morning I’m taking Yvette and leaving this estate. The Visconti family will withdraw every line of support from the DeLucas. Financial. Political. Military. All of it. As for you and me, we end here.”

My father stared at her in disbelief. “You’re talking about divorce? Over this?”

“Over this? My daughter has nearly died four times under your roof.”

Leon was the first to recover. The arrogance was gone from his voice, replaced by something careful.

“Mother, please don’t make this worse than it already is. Yvette is our sister. We do care what happens to her.”

The truth sat in the silence that followed: if my mother walked, the DeLucas would fall hard. Their money routes and political cover all ran, one way or another, through the Viscontis.

Sofia, who had gone very still, lowered her head so no one would see the fury that must have crossed her face.

She could not afford to let my mother take me away.

The estate fell into a strange hush over the next few days.

My father and Leon came every afternoon to wait outside my mother’s wing, asking for an audience and being turned away by Visconti guards. Kane, with both legs shattered, was confined to bed. And I kept taking my medication while growing weaker by the day.

That was what first made me suspicious.

The doctors had prescribed drugs I had been on for years. I knew their taste. But lately every dose left a sharp sweet note at the back of my tongue, and every night my heartbeat turned wild in my chest.

I knew Sofia had done something to my medication.

If I told my mother now, Sofia would deny everything and bury the rest.

If I drank it in front of her, she wouldn’t be able to.

That evening my mother brought in the dose herself.

“Time for your medicine, sweetheart.”

I took the glass from her hand. Under her watchful gaze, I drank every drop.

She had just reached for a cloth to dab my mouth when my body went rigid.

Pain exploded from the center of my chest. Blood surged hot from my nose and mouth at the same time. The room tilted hard to one side.

The glass slipped from my mother’s hand and shattered on the floor.

“Yvette!”