Chapter 6

It was barely dawn when I opened my eyes. For one moment, staring at the cracked ceiling, I let myself believe the Plaza had been a nightmare.

I turned my head. Alessandro lay beside me on the narrow cot, his face stripped of arrogance in sleep. The bruising on his knuckles—my blood—had purpled. His chest rose and fell with untroubled rhythm.

I memorized his jaw, the scar from the ambush I'd taken for him. Then I killed the love in my chest.

I moved without sound. The leather duffel was already packed—with the real ledger, my grandmother's rosary, and the clothes I’d need. I knelt beside him, my hand hovering over his hair. I did not touch him.

"I would have died for you," I breathed. "But I won't bury my children in your grave."

I left the Signet Ring on the pillow, and the Blood Oath annulment on the nightstand—my signature in blood. Beneath it, I left the key to the Queens box.

I walked out into the freezing rain. A taxi took me to St. Mary's Hospital in Queens—the private wing where the Family sent its wounded. My grandmother was waiting.

She engulfed me in her arms the moment I entered, crying softly. I had told her everything. Her heart was broken, but her spine was steel.

"Elena, my precious child," she whispered, clutching me. "How can they make you suffer like this? Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said. "All the arrangements are made. We're leaving together."

She nodded. She had been Rossi before she was anything else. She understood what it meant to break a blood oath.

I called my contact—the Camorra fixer who had been my father's man. He confirmed: the boat left at dawn. Forty-eight hours to Naples.

I sent the parcel to the Marino estate—a decoy ledger with a note. If Alessandro came looking, that would buy me time.

My phone buzzed. Not the Camorra line—the Marino encrypted line.

[Alessandro: You left early. Good. Check the docks on 34th—the shipment is coming in at noon. Make sure the customs agent gets his envelope. Then pick up the dry cleaning. Vittoria's dress needs to be perfect. Don't mess this up.]

I stared at the screen. He thought I was at the docks, risking my life for his smuggling, running his errands like a good little soldier, while he slept in the bed where he planned to betray me.

A small tear escaped. It was the last one.

I snapped the SIM card in half, dropped it into the hospital sink, and burned it with my lighter. I watched the plastic melt and blacken.

"I am done with this family," I whispered to the twins, my hand flat against my stomach as I helped my grandmother into the wheelchair and pushed her toward the service exit, toward the harbor, toward the death of Elena Marino.