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!”

That was the moment my mother stopped holding back.

She sealed the entire estate before the blood on my sheets had even dried. Every entrance was taken over by Visconti men. Then she summoned the best cardiac specialist in the city in the middle of the night.

He examined what remained of the medication, and his expression darkened.

“Someone added enough stimulant to push her system into collapse,” he said. “In her condition, that’s attempted murder. If she survives the night, it will be by sheer luck.”

My mother took a gun from one of her guards and headed straight for Sofia’s wing.

The whole estate blew apart at once.

And in the middle of all that chaos, my bedroom door opened.

Kane rolled in, pushed by two men.

His legs were still locked in braces. His face was pale from pain, but his eyes looked black and feverish.

“Get her up,” he said.

The men hesitated.

“Sir, she may not survive being moved.”

“Not my problem.” He spoke through his teeth. “That bitch framed Sofia and nearly got her killed. I’m putting her in cold storage until she signs a confession.”

I kept my eyes closed.

By the time they reached the old basement storage level, the cold had seeped all the way into my bones.

The place had once been used to keep meat and wine. Now it was half-abandoned concrete.

They threw me onto the wet floor and the chill soaked straight through my thin nightclothes.

Kane stopped a few feet away in his chair and looked down at me with open disgust.

“Sign it,” he said. “Admit you tampered with your own meds to set Sofia up, and I’ll let them drag you back upstairs.”

I tried to open my eyes and couldn’t.

That only made him angrier.

“Wake her up.”

A bucket of ice water crashed over me.

My whole body jerked. Pain tore through my chest so sharply I thought for one blind second that something inside had split open for good.

Then heels clicked on concrete.

Sofia walked in wearing cream cashmere and a cropped fur jacket.

“Kane, don’t be so rough,” she said, crouching beside me. Her smile was soft and sweet enough to fool anyone who hadn’t seen the rot underneath it.

“It’s freezing down here,You shouldn’t have come.”

She gave him a little smile, then turned back to me.

All the helplessness was gone from her face now. What remained was naked triumph.

“You really are hard to kill, Yvette,The dogs didn’t do it. The tower didn’t do it. Even the medication didn’t finish the job. And yet here you are, still breathing.”

I forced my eyes open a fraction and stared at her.

Her smile widened. She caught my chin in her hand.

“Did you really think Veronica could protect you forever?” she whispered. “Look at you. Father thinks you’re bad luck. Leon thinks you’re a liability. Kane wants you dead. And as for Mother...” Sofia laughed softly at the word. “Once you’re gone, give it a few years. She’ll come back to me.”

“Since you won’t live much longer, I may as well tell you the truth. I’m the one who had oil put on the observatory steps. I’m the one who swapped out your medication, dose by dose. You wanted to come back and claim your family? I wanted to see if you could survive the front door.”

“When you die, I stay the only daughter of this house. The name, the money, the love, the life. All of it stays mine.”

Frost had already crept over my soaked nightgown, sealing itself to my skin.

I dragged in one shallow breath and forced my lips apart.

“If you were that secure,” I rasped, “you wouldn’t need me dead.”

Sofia’s smile faltered.

“Keep talking, Yvette. It won’t save you.”

She straightened and looked at Kane.

“She’s dying,” she said lightly. “Let’s go. If she freezes to death down here, that’s on her.”

Kane gave me one last disgusted look and turned his chair.

Then the steel door burst inward with a deafening crash.

My mother strode in with armed men at her back, gun in hand, her face white with fury.