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Chapter 3

Author: Jasmine Flower
It was after midnight when I arrived at Black Pine.

The isolated house belonged to the Moretti Family. My father used it to hide witnesses and discipline people who had disobeyed him.

Rocco, one of his longtime enforcers, ran the property with his wife, Dana.

The moment I entered, Rocco took my phone and ID. Dana emptied my bag onto the floor.

Three sweaters, four paperbacks, a bottle of fever medicine, and my prepaid cremation receipt fell at her feet.

She picked up the medicine.

“The Don warned us that you like putting on a show when you want sympathy.”

“I have a fever. I need that.”

“You need to confess.”

She locked the medicine in a kitchen cabinet and dropped several sheets of paper onto the table.

The title had already been printed across the top:

Statement Admitting My Attempt to Steal the Moretti Succession

Rocco pushed a pen toward me.

“Sign it.”

“I didn't try to steal anything.”

“Then you stay here until you're ready to tell the truth.”

The first night, my fever climbed until I could barely see.

Dana left canned stew on the counter, but I vomited after the first bite. When I asked for my medicine, she said discomfort was part of the lesson.

At two in the morning, I knocked on the communications-room door.

“Please call an ambulance.”

Rocco didn't open it.

“Save your strength for the confession.”

The next morning, he ordered me to inventory weapons in the basement.

I made it through seven crates before blood began dripping from my nose onto the manifest.

Rocco snatched the paper away.

“Are you trying to destroy Family records now?”

“I'm bleeding.”

“You're making a mess.”

He handed me a rag and ordered me to finish.

On the third day, Dana sent me outside with two cans of diesel for the generator.

I made it halfway across the yard before my knees gave out. Snow soaked through my clothes as I lay there, too weak to stand.

Dana watched from the porch.

Dana watched from the porch and laughed.

“Still think you're some kind of Moretti princess? You're an adopted stray living on the Don's charity. Miss Bianca is the Don's biological daughter and the Family's chosen heir. You tried to steal the place that belongs to her, so you deserve every day you spend here.”

When I still couldn't stand, she called Rocco and had him drag me back inside by one arm.

“I thought you didn't believe I was a Moretti.”

Her expression hardened.

She called Rocco, and he dragged me back inside by one arm.

By the fourth day, bruises covered my skin and my gums had started bleeding.

I unfolded the hospital invoice in front of Rocco and pointed to the diagnosis.

“Call Dr. Hayes. He knows my father. Just read him what's written here.”

For the first time, Rocco hesitated.

He carried the paper into the communications room and contacted Dominic, my father's consigliere.

When he returned, he crumpled the invoice and threw it into the woodstove.

“Dominic says the Don's order stands. No hospital and no release until you confess.”

The red hematology stamp curled in the flames.

“I have leukemia.”

“The Don said you've faked illness for attention before.”

“I could die.”

Rocco looked at me without emotion.

“Then sign.”

That evening, they locked me in a storage room without food.

I curled against the wall, pressing my sleeve beneath my nose as blood continued to soak through it.

Later that evening, I remembered the emergency satellite phone in the hallway.

Dana had forgotten to lock the inner door.

I dragged myself across the floor, reached the phone, and dialed my mother's number.

This was the last time I would ask that family for help.

Not because I still believed my mother would save me.

I needed to know how far they were willing to go.

The phone rang for a long time before she answered.

“Hello?”

She sounded annoyed. Behind her, music and voices filled the St. Vita ballroom. Bianca's induction rehearsal was underway.

“Mom.”

My legs folded beneath me, and I clung to the phone bracket.

“I'm sick. I can't stop bleeding.”

She went silent.

“They won't give me my medicine,” I continued. “They won't call an ambulance. Please tell them to take me to a hospital.”

“Enough, Serena.”

Her voice sharpened.

“Your sister is preparing for the most important night of her life, and you choose now to do this?”

“I'm not trying to ruin her induction.”

“Then sign the statement.”

“I didn't do what Dad accused me of.”

“Black Pine is supposed to teach you gratitude, not give you another stage for your little performances. When you stop lying and apologize to Bianca, we'll consider bringing you home.”

“Mom, I'm bleeding everywhere.”

“And I'm done listening.”

The line went dead.

I remained on the floor with the receiver against my ear.

They called it discipline.

With that one word, they had turned my death into something they believed I deserved.

Rocco rushed into the hallway and ripped the phone from my hand. He dragged me downstairs and threw me into the unheated storm cellar.

The lock turned behind him.

I curled beside the military cot and closed my eyes.

“Fine,” I whispered. “I won't ask any of you to believe me again.”
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  • The Moretti Daughter They Denied   Chapter 10

    A thin rain fell outside Grant Memorial.My father helped my mother through the entrance and stopped at my niche. Eight years had altered him more than prison photographs showed. His back no longer held the rigid line that used to silence rooms, and his right hand trembled from an old injury he'd picked up inside.My mother touched the letters of my name as though reading the grave of a stranger. “Why doesn't she live with us in the family cemetery?”He placed white anemones below the plaque. “Because we didn't let her come home while she was alive.”She looked down at the compass in her hands. The silver case had gone dull, but the needle remained steady. “If I give this back, can she find the way?”“She already found it.” My father swallowed. “The road just doesn't lead to us.”He set the cardboard box on the floor and arranged the letters one by one. The first was dated the night he entered prison, the last the day before his release. My name was written carefully on every envelope.

  • The Moretti Daughter They Denied   Chapter 9

    The Moretti case took two years to reach trial.My father's lawyers first planned to lay everything on Rocco and Dominic. They drafted a defense claiming I had a history of manipulating the household and that my father merely wanted to remove me from a dispute over succession until I calmed down. They described Black Pine as a retreat. They called the locked cellar a security precaution.My father read the brief once and tore it down the middle.“The order was mine,” he told them. “Every time she asked for a doctor, somebody reported it up the chain. I chose not to believe her.”One lawyer warned that the admission could add years to his sentence.“Then put the years where they belong.”He pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment and obstruction of medical care. Existing racketeering and extortion counts tied to Moretti Freight were folded into the same case, and the court sentenced him to eight years in federal prison.At the plea hearing, prosecutors played the safe-house calls in chr

  • The Moretti Daughter They Denied   Chapter 8

    Only four people attended my cremation: my father, my mother, Dr. Hayes, and Sheriff Nolan.There was no procession of black cars, no Moretti banners, and no three-volley salute from men who had never once guarded me. A city employee carried a plain ceramic urn into Grant Memorial Columbarium and placed it in a standard niche. The metal plaque showed only my name and the dates of my birth and death.My father asked to add one line beneath it: Firstborn Daughter of the Moretti Family.The employee checked my directive and turned the page toward him. In the section for inscriptions and family relationships, I'd written a clear instruction.[List no relatives.]My mother broke down. She pressed both hands to the cold niche door and begged them to let her take me home.I stood behind her and felt nothing.I'd spent most of my life wishing to hear those words. By the time she finally said them, I didn't need a home anymore.After the cremation, the reckoning came fast.Rocco and Dana were c

  • The Moretti Daughter They Denied   Chapter 7

    After the recording stopped for the third time, the only sound in the storage room was my mother's muffled crying.My father stayed on the bench and replayed the line about bringing him my chart. Again and again, he listened to me say I had been ready to ask him to save me, as if repetition might send him back to the rear seat of the Cadillac.But he had already been in that car with me.He hadn't opened the hospital invoice. He had looked at his frightened, sick daughter and seen a rival.By the time they returned to Chicago, the Moretti council had gathered at the estate. My death had occurred in a property controlled by the Family, under the watch of two sworn soldiers. The safe house's calls led straight to Dominic and my father. No one could dismiss it as private grief.The oldest Family attorney placed my grandfather's succession documents on the dining table. He had served three generations of Morettis, and for the first time in my life, he said my name as though it carried weig

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    The autopsy took two days.My parents stayed in the county seat. My father sat outside the medical examiner's office without answering Family calls. Whenever Dominic tried to mention the council or Bianca's induction, he ordered him out of the building.The final report was worse than the preliminary findings.There was no single injury severe enough to kill me. What killed me was an infection nobody treated, a platelet count that kept crashing, and four days of deliberately delayed care. A small hemorrhage had started behind my left temple. By the time Dana opened the cellar, blood was spreading through my brain.The last paragraph stated that if I'd been taken to a hospital the first time I made a clear request, emergency treatment might have stabilized me long enough for transplant evaluation.A chance wasn't a guarantee.My father had still refused to let me have it.Dr. Hayes placed my full Cook County chart in front of him. On the first page, Dr. Patel had written her recommendat

  • The Moretti Daughter They Denied   Chapter 5

    My father didn't speak for a long time.The celebration went on outside his study. Bianca had just received the obsidian brooch, and champagne glasses chimed beyond the door. My mother came in smiling and asked why he wasn't accepting congratulations from the allies.He lowered the phone with care, as if one careless movement might make the sheriff's words real. “Serena is dead.”My mother's smile locked in place. “Who told you that?”“The county sheriff.”“That girl is lying again. She doesn't even have proper identification. How could the police possibly know—”“The DNA confirmed it.”The room went silent.My mother gripped the edge of the desk until her knuckles whitened. “That's impossible. She called me two hours ago.”My father looked at her as though he'd never seen her before. “She called you?”“She said she was bleeding and needed a hospital. I thought she was trying to make us bring her back.”He snatched up his keys. Within minutes, he was heading north with Dr. Julian Hayes

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