Chapter 1

Less than two minutes after I replied to their email, their response arrived. "Welcome aboard, Ms. Greco."

As I read it, I slowly began to relax.

I'd turned the Turner family down three times, so reaching out to them now had made me nervous.

In that moment, the weight finally lifted, and my eyes stung.

I lowered my head, but I barely had a moment to catch my breath.

Then the door swung open. It was Charles, carrying a cake.

He set the cake on the table and ruffled my hair. "So? Did you submit your request?"

I took a deep breath. What I'd just seen had left a knot in my stomach.

Charles opened the box. "Your favorite flavor. Think of it as an early celebration of our new life in Boston."

I studied him. His smile was easy and natural. I couldn't find a single crack in it.

"We'll both be in Boston?" I asked.

Charles's smile didn't falter. "What kind of silly question is that? Of course we will. Isn't that the whole reason we've worked so hard all these years? To go to Boston and take over the arms route?"

My hand trembled before I could stop it.

That much was true. Charles and I had grown up together.

He lived next door. My parents, Elena and Daniel Greco, had risked their lives alongside his parents in the Caruso family.

We'd gone to the same school since we were little.

We entered all kinds of competitions together. We even picked the same shooting range for target practice.

The year I turned 16, he suddenly said, "Selena, why don't we apply for the Boston arms route together someday? That way we can take over the family's core operations side by side."

The truth was, I'd always wanted to join the Turner family, the biggest mafia family in Miami. They had better resources and controlled more than a dozen arms routes.

But when I thought about it, working alongside Charles sounded pretty good too.

Things stayed that way until we turned 18 and entered the Caruso family's hunting competition together.

Susie Bianchi ended up in our group.

Susie was well known in the Caruso family. She was smart and pretty. At 12, she'd delivered the family's documents to the docks alone, carrying a gun to protect them.

Don Caruso had even praised her for it.

That day on the hunting grounds, Charles drove after a deer. Susie and I tried to shoot it from the back seat.

In the end, Susie was the one who hit it.

Our group took first place.

By the end of the day, Charles was looking at Susie differently.

After that, the two of them got close. Several times, I went to the shooting range to practice and found them together, talking and laughing.

So I pulled away from Charles.

Charles noticed in less than three days.

He tracked me down. "What's going on with you lately? You won't even pick up when I call."

Before I could say anything, Susie threw an arm around me. "Is this because of me? Don't worry, Selena. I just want to be friends with you guys. I'm not trying to steal Charles."

Her explanation took some of the edge off my resentment.

After that, they included me in everything they did.

Even my parents said the three of us were inseparable.

I thought it would always be like that. If I hadn't seen that video from my future self, I would have kept believing them.

I never imagined they didn't want me in Boston at all.

They'd gone behind my back and changed my transfer request.

When I stayed quiet for too long, Charles frowned. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head and looked at him. "I'm tired. You should go."

Charles started to say something, then thought better of it.

"Get some rest, then. Susie and I will come by tomorrow, and we can all go unwind at the pool hall."

I didn't answer. I just watched him walk out.

The moment he was gone, I slumped back in my chair.

The room went quiet. I opened my laptop again and used my phone to take a picture of my withdrawn request.

Then I contacted a hacker named Noah Bennett and asked him to dig into the Caruso family's login records. I wanted to know where someone had logged into my account.

In under half an hour, Noah had found something.

Someone had logged into my account from the Caruso family's council hall the day before. Charles and Susie just happened to have been there that day.

I took a picture of Noah's evidence too.

I saved both photos to my phone.