Chapter 2

My chest tightened with a sharp, stinging pain. It was clear that the promise he’d made five years ago had been dead and buried for a long time.

"It’s nothing. My hand just slipped when I was clearing the table."

After I finished scrubbing the mess in the kitchen, I walked into the living room. Rocco was sitting on the sofa, carefully stitching a tear in Elena’s silk dressing gown.

I stood in the shadows for a long time, debating with myself, before finally deciding to come clean about the international medical relief mission.

"Rocco, in a few days, I’m planning to—"

He cut me off, his voice like a blade.

"That supervisor job I mentioned at the Southside Trading Company? It’s off the table."

He didn't even look up. The long steel needle in his hand caught the light, making my head swim.

"Elena says she’s tired of being cooped up at the university. She thinks it’s boring. I gave the position to her."

"Just wait a few more days. Once I get the business out west sorted, I’ll find something else for you."

Thinking of my decision to join the relief mission, I refused. "I don’t need it. Don't go through the trouble of finding me a job."

Rocco’s hands stopped moving abruptly.

"Vivian, don't catch an attitude with me. Openings like that don't happen every day."

"If Elena gets tired of it after a couple of days and wants out, she can just give the spot back to you, right?"

I looked him straight in the eye and said, syllable by syllable, "I really don't need that job."

"Since you’ve already decided it’s hers, then it’s hers."

Rocco looked at me and suddenly let out a mocking laugh.

"I knew you still despised her deep down. It must have been quite the performance for you to play nice at her birthday tonight."

He stood up and headed upstairs without a backward glance. I just stood there, paralyzed.

Back in my cramped little room, I pulled out an old leather bag and started packing for the medical mission.

There wasn't much to take—just a few old clothes and some well-worn medical journals. Tucked at the bottom was a ratty, balding teddy bear—one Rocco had sewn for me by hand years ago.

Back then, Rocco had been the perfect brother.

We grew up without parents, clinging to each other in the slums. We survived on neighbors' charity and the protection money Rocco collected on the streets.

I remember when the neighborhood punks would point at me and call me a stray, a nobody. Rocco would pull me into his arms and roar at them with bloodshot eyes:

"Don’t listen to them, Vivian! I want you! You’re not a stray!"

"As long as I’m around, you’ll always have a home."

But everything changed the moment Elena walked through the door.

Five years ago, the old Don—the man who had always looked out for us—was turned into a pincushion during a turf war. His family fled overnight, leaving Elena behind as a lonely orphan.

The old Don had saved Rocco’s life once. To settle that debt of honor, Rocco ignored the family elders and brought her home.

From that moment on, Rocco’s heart belonged entirely to Elena.

The guards around the estate used to make crude jokes in private, calling Elena the "child bride" Rocco had scavenged. As time went on, Rocco seemed to take it to heart; the way he doted on her was so obvious a blind man could see it.

Until a year ago.

I saw Elena with my own eyes in a back alley, fooling around with the spoiled brat from a rival family. She was laughing at Rocco right to the guy's face.

She said Rocco was nothing but a muscle-brained thug.

She said she’d never settle for a provincial hick who smelled like gunpowder; she was going to marry into high society.

But before I could tell Rocco any of this, Elena spotted me. She beat me home.

By the time I walked through the door, she was collapsed on the floor next to a shattered tea set.

"Rocco! Vivian is jealous because you love me! She tried to poison my tea! My stomach hurts so much..."

"She’s trying to kill me!"

"My father saved your lives! Is this how you treat me?"

"I didn't—"

Before I could even start to explain, Rocco’s hand caught me hard across the face. He was convinced I’d done it, simply because I knew my way around medicine.

"Is this how you repay the old Don? If he hadn't taken that bullet for us, we’d both be dead!"

"Vivian, you better pray Elena is okay. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your life atoning for this!"

"Lock her in the attic."

Rocco called his men to lock me away. He scooped Elena up and sprinted for the hospital without looking back.

Since then, as long as Elena was around, we couldn't have a civil conversation. To avoid trouble, I’d spent the last year practically living in the lab.

I was lost in the memory when the door suddenly swung open.

"Vivian, why the hell are you packing bags in the middle of the night?"