Chapter 3

I had no desire to explain again. I turned toward the front door

Something shattered behind me.

Dad hurled a crystal decanter at the floor near my feet. A shard grazed my calf, and blood appeared.

“Audrey DeLuca, if you walk through that door, don't expect this family to pay another cent for you!” Vincent's face was dark with rage. “You have signed enough promissory notes over the years. Repay every one by next week. If you don't, I will turn them over to our family attorney. Neither the collection action nor an investigation into the food money you stole will disappear merely because your name is DeLuca.”

Mom looked at the blood on my leg and seemed ready to approach. Camilla gently caught her arm.

“Uncle Vincent, please don't be angry. Audrey was just discharged. She may be acting impulsively.”

Her plea only made Dad regard her as more considerate.

“Do you hear her, Audrey? Even now Camilla is defending you. Marco died saving us, and you refuse to accept even the small responsibility of caring for his daughter.”

I looked back. Dad stood before Camilla as if guarding a precious family legacy. Mom watched my injury but did not step around her. They expected me to surrender. In the past, invoking Marco's sacrifice and DeLuca honor had always made me lower my head.

This time, I felt nothing.

“Fine.” I opened the door, “I will repay everything by next week.”

Eighteen thousand dollars. Two hundred notes. Once paid, an obligation that had never been mine could no longer bind me.

As I left the estate, I heard Dad shout behind me.

“Let her go! I want to see how many days she lasts without the DeLuca name.”

I did not look back.

Every step hurt. Blood soaked my sock as I limped through the estate gates. I had never lived beyond my family's control, and now I had nowhere to go.

Wind blew in from the bay. Beneath a streetlamp, I crouched and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to warm a body that had gone cold.

My parents had once trusted me. That changed in elementary school, when they gave me our monthly lunch money and told me to look after Camilla.

Whenever she wanted to eat with her friends, I gave her two thirds of it. Weeks later, she collapsed from hunger, and Mom found a designer bag hidden in my closet.

I had never seen it before.

When Camilla woke, she curled against Mom and whispered, “Please don’t blame Audrey. She probably just wanted the bag very badly.”

With one sentence, she turned the missing money into my theft—and herself into the sister who was still kind enough to defend me.

From then on, every lie she told became another mistake I had to repay, and every sacrifice I made was called my duty as a DeLuca.

Eight years later, that duty had become two hundred promissory notes.

I took them from my bag and looked through them again.

Eighteen thousand dollars.

To the DeLucas, it could not buy one of Camilla's gowns. To a recent high-school graduate, it was an impossible wall.

Still, I straightened every note. I had seven days, and whatever it took, I would repay them. This was not an angry daughter running away. I was leaving for good.