3

Two bodyguards hauled me up, and then something slammed into the back of my neck.

Everything went black.

The confinement room was bitterly cold.

Unconscious, I sank into one nightmare after another.

I dreamed of the fire five years ago, my father covered in blood, shoving me into the getaway car.

I dreamed of Dante proposing, swearing he'd always have my back.

Then I saw my mother's necklace crumble to ash as the heart monitor flatlined.

I jolted awake!

Just then, a bodyguard pushed the door open.

"The Don took Ms. Rhodes to the island to get stitched up. He won't be back this week. He says you can get lost."

I said nothing. It took everything I had to push myself up and make my way out of the estate, one hand braced against the wall.

It was still raining.

I ran barefoot all the way to my father's care home.

When I pushed open the door to his room, it was dead silent.

Every machine had been taken away. Crushed pill bottles and cigarette butts littered the floor.

My father lay still in bed.

The doctor on duty saw me burst in with blood all over my head and started to cry quietly.

"Last night, the Don's men took the equipment and cut the power to the room.

"They smashed all the emergency medication and said they'd break the hands of anyone who put his oxygen back on.

"Mr. Moretti didn't even last eight minutes..."

My whole world caved in.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Every last hope in me died.

I went to the bed, knelt, and closed my father's eyes with shaking hands. Then I pulled the white sheet over him.

"Dad... I'm sorry."

I told no one. I took my father to the crematorium on the edge of the city by myself.

No eulogy. No gun salute.

An hour later, holding the urn, I went to an abandoned warehouse at the old Brooklyn docks.

Three disabled old men were sitting inside.

They had once been the Moretti family's most loyal men.

When Antonio Greco saw how badly I was hurt, he shot to his feet.

"Who did this? Was it that Cavallaro animal? Want us to go take him out tonight?"

I calmly shook my head and handed them all the cash in my bag and the last two checks in my mother's name.

"My father's gone."

My voice was quiet, but it brought tears to their eyes.

"There's no one left in the Moretti family. Take this money, go back to Sicily, and live a clean, quiet life."

"What about you?"

"Whatever I owed the Cavallaro family, I paid it off today. My father's dead. There's nothing left they can hold over me."

Once I'd gotten them settled, I went back to the Moretti family's abandoned house and lit a fire in a copper basin.

I threw in everything that had anything to do with Dante.

The photo of him teaching me to hold a gun, the vow he'd written after he took a bullet for me, the cradle for our unborn baby...

It all burned to ash.

Then my phone buzzed. It was a photo from Camilla.

In the picture, she was leaning against the deck rail of a yacht, her arm bandaged.

The name "Elena" had been painted over on the hull and replaced with "Camilla."

Right after that, a notification popped up: a deposit of five million dollars.

Dante had left a single line in the memo.

"Behave. Stop making scenes."

Off on his island getaway, Dante was probably waiting to see how I'd react.

He thought I'd call and scream at him like I used to, or show up that night and shove Camilla off the deck.

He thought money was the only thing that could make me fall in line.

I stared at the screen and gave a bitter laugh.

Then I snapped the bank card in half and threw it into the fire along with my phone.

I didn't want anything that belonged to the Cavallaro family.

Holding my father's urn, I walked to the edge of a cliff.

With the sea wind in my face, I scattered his ashes over the water, a little at a time.

I took off my bloodstained coat. The old Elena was dead.

From now on, I'd live only for myself.

As I leaned out to brush the ash off my hands, my foot slipped and I pitched forward.

Out of nowhere, a man rushed up and pulled me back.

He gripped my wrist, his expression dark.

"Throwing yourself off a cliff over an idiot like Dante? Is that what Moretti pride looks like?"