Chapter 3

That medicine was the last supply in all of New York. Bringing more in from outside would take a week at best. "Lucian, I don't think I'll make it through tonight."

The whole room burst out laughing. Marcus laughed until tears ran. "Cassie, you'd invent a joke like that just to get out of being the flower girl?"

My mother wiped the sweat off my forehead. "Cassie, how are you still like this? When you were small and couldn't win against Elena, you played sick. It's been all these years. It's time you outgrew it."

"I'm not faking." I had no strength left to argue.

"All right, all right, you're not." She nodded the way you nod at a child. "Once you've handed over the flowers and seen Elena through the ceremony, we'll take you to the hospital. All right?"

To the cheering of the guests, I carried the bouquet and put it in Elena's hands. The photographer called everyone in for pictures, and I stood in a yellowed apron, squeezed to the very edge of the frame like an outsider nobody had counted on.

When the photographs were done, my father produced a property transfer agreement and slid it in front of me. "The Family's port operation was registered in your name. Elena is back now, so it should go to her."

That port was left to me by my late grandmother. On her deathbed she took my hand in hers and said a girl needs property of her own if she wants to stand on solid ground in an organization like ours.

"You've had ten peaceful years. That's enough." My father pushed the agreement closer. "Sign it and you can still live here. Nobody's love for you changes. Don't worry."

Elena pouted. "But Lucian said this house is for me. If Cassie moves in, there won't be anywhere to put my things."

Lucian spoke without heat. "Cassie, the organization has a warehouse standing empty. I sent men to fix it up. It's quiet and out of the way, good for you to convalesce."

That warehouse was where I hid with him for two years, the worst and poorest years, when he had just come into the underworld and the Family had no footing yet. The walls leaked air on all four sides and rats and roaches crawled through it, and I stayed with him through the darkest stretch of his life without ever complaining about the hardship. Yet now the same place was the charity he was handing me.

"I won't sign."

Marcus patted my shoulder. "Don't be difficult. Elena suffered more in those missing years than you can imagine. You stay in the warehouse a few days and we'll come get you. It's temporary. Once she's calmed down, we're a family again."

The pain tore through me and my vision doubled and blurred. I had no strength left to argue. "I need to go to the hospital."

Lucian seized my wrist, forceful now. "Every Family member is here today. If you call an ambulance, are you trying to make them all think badly of Elena? Hold on one more hour. When the dinner is over I'll take you to the hospital myself."

"I really can't hold on." The pain had me barely standing. In the struggle my phone slid out of my palm.

Elena snatched it up first, something vicious flashing in her eyes. "Are you trying to call someone for help, so you can say we abused you?"

She pressed the power button and pushed the phone into her own pocket. "Sign, and I'll give it back."

Family relatives and the old men of the underworld arrived one after another. Nobody spared a thought for whether I lived or died. They were all listening to her describe ten years of hardship and wandering, how she had lived on the streets and been preyed on and nearly never saw her family again. The whole family embraced her. It was very warm, very moving.

I braced myself against the wall and slowly straightened up. Just then one of my men brought me my medical file. Now they would have to believe I wasn't faking.

Before I could get a word out, she found a pretext and had my man seized. Then she slapped me across the face and dropped her voice on purpose. "Cassie, you'll never know how hopeless those three minutes were, waiting for you ten years ago. Today you pay it back with interest."

Then she tore my medical records to shreds right in front of me.