Chapter 3

I switched off the feed, watched my mother's private jet touch down beyond the window, and felt myself grow calm.

Carlos called and called. I didn't pick up once.

Then came Lorenzo's texts, one after another.

"Alessia, sign this transfer of assets immediately and let Maria take over your docks! This is to wash the sin off you!"

"How dare you ignore me? This is the will of the Don, not a negotiation!"

"Alessia, I order you to answer me right now! Otherwise, you'll answer for this under Family rules!"

A mocking smile tugged at my lips as I read the messages. Then I blocked the number.

The old wound in my shoulder began to ache. I ignored the sting and traced the scar with my fingertips.

That scar came from Moscow three years earlier, when Lorenzo was pinned down by a rival gang.

I had taken a bullet clean through the shoulder to get him out.

He held me while I bled all over him, his eyes red, and swore to me, "Alessia, as long as I am Don, half the glory of this Family is yours."

And now, for one orphan girl, he had stripped me of my inheritance and wanted to send me into the red-light district to be trampled by anyone who felt like it.

And Carlos.

At sixteen, Carlos was sent to Siberia for training and molded into one of the Family's expendable men.

The day he left, I pulled off my own body armor and forced it onto him.

I told him, "Carlos, stay alive. Become the sharpest blade in my hand."

He knelt in the snow and kissed the back of my hand like a believer.

And now that knife had turned around and pointed at my heart, all because Maria said my existence was the Family's sin.

Right then, a private email from Maria popped up on the tablet.

The attachment was a video.

In it, Maria was standing in my bedroom.

She was directing the servants to gather up the spoils I had kept for years, the medals that embodied the Family's honor and the rare, discontinued guns I had assembled myself, and throw all of it into the incinerator in the garden.

She spoke to the camera, her eyes full of mercy. "Alessia, things this full of violence will poison your soul.

"I've burned them all and sent them up to God as smoke. It's a purification ritual I’ve performed for you. No need to thank me."

At the end of the video, she dug the only thing my grandmother left me out of my jewelry box.

The sapphire ring that stood for the Family's bloodline.

On camera, she dropped the ring into a drain as if it disgusted her, then folded her hands in prayer for the camera.

"Vanity is a sin too. It's time you purified yourself and atoned."

The camera swung around. Carlos and Lorenzo stood beside her, gazing at her with indulgent smiles, as if what she had thrown away were a piece of trash.

My fingers tightened around the champagne glass until they blanched.

Did it hurt? Of course it did.

I had bled for this Family, but in their eyes, none of it mattered.

A few hollow prayers from Maria outweighed every drop.

They had enjoyed every victory I won for them without a shred of guilt, yet they despised the gunpowder that would never wash off my skin.

"Alessia." My mother had just come off the plane, and her eyes were locked on me. "You're hurting?"

I took a deep breath and drank the champagne down in one swallow.

The cold liquid slid down my throat and tamped down the violence churning inside me.

"No, Mother." I lifted my head. "I was only wondering which to do first tonight: break Lorenzo's legs or cut out Maria's lying tongue."

My mother sat across from me, a satisfied smile tugging at her lips.

"There's my daughter. The Family creed has no place for forgiveness, only settling accounts."

Before we got into the car, Carlos's last message came through.

"Alessia, this is your last chance.

"Come to the Family hall, kneel before Maria and confess your sins. Beg her forgiveness for your arrogance. Maybe I can still keep you alive. Otherwise, by morning, Alessia will no longer exist in London."

I laughed at it, powered the phone off, and dropped it in an airport bin.

A bodyguard raised a black umbrella over me.

In my heels, I walked step by step toward the armored Rolls-Royce waiting at the curb.

Did they really think they could shove me into the abyss and enjoy themselves in peace?

They had forgotten that I was a devil who had crawled out of that abyss.

The car pulled away and headed for the Family hall.

There, I would personally take back everything that belonged to me.

And while I was at it, I would crush every traitor's spine, inch by inch.