Chapter 2

I went back to the estate.

While packing in the bedroom, a dust-covered CD fell from the top of the wardrobe.

My father had left it behind.

I stared at it for two seconds, then slowly slid it into the player.

On the screen was the moment Salvatore first proposed to me.

In front of the family chapel, surrounded by white doves, he knelt on one knee before me, his smile deep and burning with passion.

My father, Salvatore's chief bodyguard, had for once dropped his stoic guard-duty expression and stood there smiling, raising his camera to capture the moment.

I had believed all that happiness was frozen in time forever.

During a massive FBI raid on the Santoros, the Family issued an emergency alert: sixteen-year-old Caterina had gone missing.

My father found her hours later, her clothes torn and disheveled. The Family she was betrothed to immediately broke off the engagement, and Caterina accused my father of raping her.

Then she stood before the Commission of the Five Families and pointed at him.

"He did it," she sobbed. Then she dropped to her knees before her father. "But please don't kill him. What he did doesn't deserve death."

My father denied it until his voice gave out. I believed him. No one else did.

My Family had nowhere near the Santoros' power. To the men on the Commission, my father was only a bodyguard, while Caterina was a sixteen-year-old girl begging mercy for the man she accused.

The chairman gave a single verdict. "Handle it yourselves."

Everyone in that room knew what he meant: whatever the Santoros did next, the Five Families would look the other way.

The elder Santoro's men tortured my father, tied stones to both my parents, and dumped them into the sea.

By the time the tide returned them, I could barely recognize my father's face.

Salvatore held me while I screamed.

"Julia, I promise you, no matter what it costs me, I'll be right beside you when we kill every last one of those bastards!"

He kept that promise. Together, we began tearing the Santoro empire apart from the inside.

That was when Caterina started sending Salvatore coded warnings behind her father's back.

One warning made him change convoy routes minutes before a Santoro hit squad opened fire on the empty car.

She never stopped pleading for mercy either. "I know what Julia's father did to me," she wrote, "but he didn't deserve to die. Julia shouldn't lose anyone else because of me."

Salvatore read that letter until the paper softened in his hands.

"She was the victim, and she still tried to save your father," he told me. "How can you keep blaming her?"

I stared at him.

The man helping me avenge my father had already decided my father was a rapist.

Five years ago, when we finally cornered the elder Santoro, I killed him. Salvatore pulled Caterina behind him before I could turn the gun on her.

He brought her into the Rizzo Family under his protection, and the hatred between us never left.

Six weeks ago, we stormed the last Santoro stronghold in a full-scale firefight.

Stray bullets screamed through the air.

When I saw a round heading straight for Salvatore, I threw myself in front of him without thinking.

A searing pain tore through my lower abdomen.

A groan tore out of me. I turned to look for him, only to see him rush past me and pull Caterina tight against him where she cowered beneath the sofa.

"Caterina, don't be scared... I'm here..."

Caterina was shaking all over. She pointed at me, drenched in blood.

Salvatore didn't spare me a single glance. He just murmured to her softly, "Don't worry. She won't hurt you."

Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice. I clutched my lower abdomen and snarled.

"Salvatore... I'm the one who's hurt!"

He blinked, startled, and only then came back to hoist me onto his back, his other hand still holding tightly onto Caterina.

Not until he had escorted her to safety and confirmed she was unharmed did he finally put me in the car to the hospital.

The haze of memory faded. I closed my eyes, took out my phone, and dialed a number.

"I need you to forge a death certificate. I want the name Julia to disappear from this place forever."

When I got the confirmation, I hung up.

Just then, the bedroom door slammed open with a bang.

Salvatore walked in, Caterina clinging to his arm.