Chapter 3

The doctors worked on me for two hours before the numbers on the monitors stopped diving.

“She’s critical,” he told my mother. “The fall already damaged her organs. That scene just now triggered another hemorrhage and several dangerous rhythm crashes. We can keep treating her, but at this point it’s maintenance, not recovery. Whether she lasts weeks, months, or less... that won’t be up to us.”

My mother sat down like all the bones had gone out of her body.

After that she cleared the room and kept watch beside me alone.

Outside, the estate remained anything but quiet.

Kane was being punished in the lower courtyard. I could hear every crack of the metal rod and every scream that followed. Sofia was kneeling in the rain, begging for mercy on his behalf. My father and Leon were both out there too.

“Veronica!” my father roared through the storm. “Are you really going to burn the house down over someone who’s already halfway dead?”

“Kane is your son!”

I opened my eyes and looked at my mother. Her face was worn raw with grief.

“Mom, Let it go.”

“I’m not going to last long anyway. Don’t destroy yourself fighting them for me.”

“Send me somewhere else. Anywhere. I don’t want to stay here and be in their way.”

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“You are my daughter,I did not search for you all these years just to let them hurt you.”

Then she stood, crossed the room, and opened the door.

Everyone in the courtyard went still.

“Roland, if this is what you think of me, then we’re done.”

Rain drummed against the stone. No one moved.

“Tomorrow morning I’m taking Yvette and leaving this estate. The Visconti family will withdraw every line of support from the DeLucas. Financial. Political. Military. All of it. As for you and me, we end here.”

My father stared at her in disbelief. “You’re talking about divorce? Over this?”

“Over this? My daughter has nearly died four times under your roof.”

Leon was the first to recover. The arrogance was gone from his voice, replaced by something careful.

“Mother, please don’t make this worse than it already is. Yvette is our sister. We do care what happens to her.”

The truth sat in the silence that followed: if my mother walked, the DeLucas would fall hard. Their money routes and political cover all ran, one way or another, through the Viscontis.

Sofia, who had gone very still, lowered her head so no one would see the fury that must have crossed her face.

She could not afford to let my mother take me away.

The estate fell into a strange hush over the next few days.

My father and Leon came every afternoon to wait outside my mother’s wing, asking for an audience and being turned away by Visconti guards. Kane, with both legs shattered, was confined to bed. And I kept taking my medication while growing weaker by the day.

That was what first made me suspicious.

The doctors had prescribed drugs I had been on for years. I knew their taste. But lately every dose left a sharp sweet note at the back of my tongue, and every night my heartbeat turned wild in my chest.

I knew Sofia had done something to my medication.

If I told my mother now, Sofia would deny everything and bury the rest.

If I drank it in front of her, she wouldn’t be able to.

That evening my mother brought in the dose herself.

“Time for your medicine, sweetheart.”

I took the glass from her hand. Under her watchful gaze, I drank every drop.

She had just reached for a cloth to dab my mouth when my body went rigid.

Pain exploded from the center of my chest. Blood surged hot from my nose and mouth at the same time. The room tilted hard to one side.

The glass slipped from my mother’s hand and shattered on the floor.

“Yvette!”