Alessia POV

The grease in the pot was stubborn, a cloying, gray film that coated my hands and smelled of old garlic and scorched onions.

"Scrub harder, Princess," the head cook barked, tossing another stainless-steel tray onto the metal counter with a deafening clang. "We don't pay you to stare at the bubbles."

"I'm scrubbing," I muttered, digging the steel wool into the metal until my knuckles turned white.

I was at Sal's Trattoria, a patch of neutral ground in the Bronx where the Five Families rarely conducted business because the marinara was too cheap and the fluorescent lighting too honest.

Sal, the owner, was an old man who knew better than to ask why a Salinas girl was washing his dishes for minimum wage. He had simply handed me a stained apron and told me to keep my head down.

It had been three days since I walked out of the estate.

My flight had been grounded due to a hurricane tearing through the Caribbean. I needed cash, and more importantly, I needed to stay off the grid until the runway cleared.

The back door swung open.

The kitchen didn't just go silent; it froze.

I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. I knew that heavy, commanding presence. I felt it in the way the air suddenly grew too thin to breathe, the oxygen sucked out of the room by a gravitational force.

"Out," a deep voice commanded.

It wasn't a shout. It was a low rumble, absolute and terrifying.

The cooks and dishwashers scrambled, abandoning their stations, boots skidding on the tile as they fled.

I kept scrubbing.

Swish, scrape, swish.

"Alessia."

Dante's voice was right behind my ear, a dark caress.

"You're getting suds on your suit, Don Moretti," I said, not pausing in my rhythm.

He grabbed my wrist, his fingers curling around my wet skin to pull my hand out of the soapy water. His grip was firm, possessive, scorching.

He turned me around.

He looked wrecked.

There were dark, bruise-like circles under his eyes that his aviators usually hid. In his free hand, he was holding a white bakery box.

"I brought you something," he said, his voice rough.

He placed the box on the dirty metal counter, right next to a pile of vegetable peelings, and opened it.

Coconut cake.

My throat tightened, a sudden, painful constriction. It was the cake we used to share on the fire escape when we were teenagers-before he was the Don, before I was the convict. Before the blood and the lies stained everything we touched.

"I remember," he said softly, watching my face. "It's your favorite."

I looked at the pristine white frosting, then up at him.

"You think sugar fixes this?" I asked, my voice trembling with suppressed rage. "You think a slice of cake erases seven years of sleeping on a concrete slab?"

"I'm trying, Alessia," he said, the mask slipping, his voice cracking with frustration. "I'm trying to fix this. But you... you ran away. You're washing dishes like a peasant. You are a Capo's daughter. You are my fiancé."

"I am a dishwasher," I said, wiping my wet, red hands on my apron. "And it's the first honest work I've ever done."

"Come home," he demanded, stepping closer. He boxed me in against the industrial sink, trapping me.

His body heat radiated against mine, a familiar fire that now only burned.

"Your parents are furious. But I can handle them. We can get married next month. I'll buy you a gallery. You can paint again."

"I sold my paints," I said flatly. "To buy you that armored SUV when the Russians were hunting you. Remember?"

He flinched as if I'd slapped him.

"I will buy you a thousand studios. Just... stop this. Come home."

He leaned in, his lips inches from mine. His scent-sandalwood and gunpowder-filled my senses.

For a second, just a split second, I wanted to give in. It would be so easy to be taken care of. To be the Don's wife. To be safe.

Then his phone rang.

The specific ringtone. The one for her.

He pulled back instantly, the spell shattered. He answered, his jaw tight.

"Chiara? What? Slow down."

I watched the color drain from his face.

"She's on the roof," he said to me, his eyes wide with panic. "She says she's going to jump if I don't come back right now to read her a bedtime story."

I stared at him. The absurdity of it was almost funny, in a dark, twisted way.

"Go," I said cold as ice.

"Alessia, I-"

"Go!" I yelled, shoving him hard in the chest. "Go save the princess. Go peel her grapes and read her stories."

"I have to," he said, looking torn, a fissure of conflict cracking his composure. "If she jumps... the truce with the Falcones... everything falls apart if the family looks chaotic."

"It's always politics, isn't it?" I said bitterly. "Or maybe you just like being her hero."

He looked at me with anguish, a silent plea in his eyes, before he turned and ran out the back door.

I stood alone in the silent kitchen.

I looked at the coconut cake. Perfect, white, sweet.

I picked it up and dumped it into the trash can, right on top of the fish guts.

Then I turned back to the sink and plunged my hands into the scalding water.

The silence in the Salinas estate was not peaceful; it was heavy, suffocating, like the air in a room moments before a bomb detonates.

I sat rigid in the corner of the drawing room, my knuckles white as I clutched the leather-bound book in my lap. I had salvaged it from the pile of "trash" my aunt had ordered the maids to incinerate. It was Alessia's prison diary, and it burned against my palms like a live coal.

Dr. Rossi descended the grand staircase, removing his spectacles to wipe them with a handkerchief. His movements were slow, deliberate, and radiating frustration. My aunt Isabella and uncle Marco rushed to the foot of the stairs to meet him.

"How is she?" Aunt Isabella asked, her fingers twisting the pearls at her throat. "Is it her heart? The leukemia returning?"

Dr. Rossi sighed, snapping his medical bag shut. He looked less like a healer and more like a judge. "Mrs. Salinas, I have run every conceivable test. EKG, blood panels, full-body MRI. Chiara is not just stable; she is physiologically flawless."

The room seemed to stop breathing.

"What?" Uncle Marco blinked, his face slack. "But she's... she's frail. She fainted."

"She is an actress," Dr. Rossi said, his voice cutting through the air like a scalpel. "Her heart is strong. Her blood counts are perfect. Frankly, she is healthier than I am."

"That's impossible," Isabella stammered, shaking her head in frantic denial. "The transplant... the rejection risks..."

"There are no rejection risks because there is nothing to reject. She is perfectly healthy," the doctor snapped, losing his patience. "She is playing you for fools."

With that, he turned and walked out. The front door clicked shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the cavernous hall.

Isabella sank onto the velvet sofa, her face ashen. "He's wrong. He must be wrong."

"He's not," I said.

My voice shook, but the truth clawing at my throat wouldn't let me stay silent. I stood up, my legs trembling, and walked to the marble coffee table. I slammed the leather book down. The thud made them both jump.

"What is that?" Marco asked, eyeing the book warily.

"Alessia's journal," I said, my voice hardening. "From Danbury."

Isabella waved a dismissive hand, looking away. "Burn it. I don't want to hear about that girl."

"You will listen!"

The command tore from my throat, a scream that shattered the decorum of the room. They both froze, staring at me in shock. I had never raised my voice to the heads of the family. Not once.

I opened the book to the page I had dog-eared. The handwriting was jagged, frantic.

"October 14th, three years ago," I read aloud.

"'They came for me at midnight. Transported to the clinic in Jersey. No anesthesia because the doctor was in a rush. They drilled into my hip. It hurt worse than the beatings in the yard. But it's for Dante. They said Dante is dying. They said he needs my marrow. So I gave it. I would give him my bones if it kept him alive.'"

I looked up. My aunt's face had turned a sickly shade of gray.

"You told her it was for Dante," I whispered, the horror of it making me nauseous. "You lied to her. You used her love for him to harvest her marrow for Chiara."

"We had to," Marco said, his voice hollow, trying to find a footing on the moral high ground that didn't exist. "Chiara needed a match. Alessia... Alessia was in prison. She didn't need her strength."

"She understood," I said, flipping to another page, my anger cold and precise. "She learned Spanish inside. She understood every insult you threw at her at dinner. Every single word."

"She knew?" Isabella covered her mouth, her eyes widening.

"She knew you hated her," I said. "And she left. She didn't run away in a childish tantrum. She escaped hostile territory."

I looked up at the ceiling, toward the master suite where Dante had just carried Chiara.

"And God help us all when the Don finds out," I said.

Giuliana POV

Dante had stormed out an hour ago, leaving a vacuum of terrifying calm in his wake following the doctor's report. He mentioned something about verifying financial records, but the look in his eyes promised retribution, not accounting.

The house felt haunted, heavy with the weight of unburied secrets.

I walked past Chiara's room. The door was locked from the outside now-a temporary cage for a volatile animal.

Downstairs, my aunt and uncle sat in the drawing room, nursing glasses of scotch in heavy silence, their gazes fixed on the wall as if it held the answers to their ruin.

I couldn't stay there. I needed to see it for myself. I needed to understand the hell Alessia had survived.

My feet carried me to the third floor. To the attic.

I pushed open the heavy door to the storage room where they had forced Alessia to exist.

The air was stagnant, smelling of dust and... an acrid, lingering undercurrent of smoke.

I frowned, stepping inside. I walked to the corner where Alessia's meager belongings were piled like refuse.

Her sketchbook lay there. Or rather, the corpse of it.

It hadn't just been torn; it had been eviscerated. Shredded with a blade, strip by agonizing strip, until the art was unrecognizable.

And in the corner, on the bare floorboards, I saw them-dark, jagged scorch marks.

Someone had tried to start a fire right next to the bed.

The rumors the maids whispered in the kitchen came flooding back. How Chiara liked to play with lighters. How she used to sneak up here when the house was asleep.

I knelt to inspect the burns. As I lowered my head, I spotted something shoved deep under the cot.

I pulled out a small, dusty box.

Inside were photos. Old snapshots of Dante and Alessia from high school.

But Alessia's face had been obliterated in every single one.

Violent, deep scratches gouged through the glossy paper, erasing her features entirely.

A chill raced down my spine. This wasn't just a spoiled brat wanting attention.

This was a predator trying to erase its prey.

Adrenaline surged through me. I grabbed the box and the remains of the sketchbook, turning on my heel. I ran downstairs, my footsteps thundering against the silence.

My aunt looked up, startled, as I burst into the drawing room.

"Look," I demanded, slamming the mutilated photos onto the coffee table. "Look at what your 'fragile' daughter did."

Isabella picked up a photo. Her hand trembled, the ice in her glass clinking softly.

"She tried to burn the room," I said, my voice shaking with rage. "There are scorch marks by the bed. She didn't just want to send Alessia to prison, Aunt Isabella. She wanted her gone. Permanently."

"No," Isabella whispered, her face pale. "They are sisters."

"No," I countered, ruthless. "One is a sister. The other is a monster."

Before she could respond, the front door slammed open, the sound echoing like a gunshot.

Dante was back.

And he wasn't alone.

He held a thick stack of files in his hand, his knuckles white. The darkness in his eyes made the air in the room drop ten degrees; I wanted to crawl under the table to escape it.

He didn't acknowledge us.

Instead, his cold gaze drifted upward, piercing through the ceiling beams toward the room directly above us.

Toward Chiara.

"Unlock the door," he commanded.