All Chapters of Vows Of Vendetta: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

POV: Luciano"Six months." Doctor Whitfield said it plainly, like he was reading a weather report, and I hated him for it even though none of this was his fault. "Perhaps less, if the treatment does not respond well. I am very sorry, Mr Rodriguez."I did not look at him. I looked at my grandmother instead, propped up in the hospital bed with a spine straighter than mine had ever managed to be, and she was not looking at either of us. She was looking out the window like the news did not concern her at all."Say something," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to."What is there to say, Luciano." She finally turned her head. Her eyes were the same eyes that had raised me since I was seven years old, sharp and clear even now, even with a tube in her arm and a death sentence hanging over the room. "I have run this family for forty years. I think I am allowed to die on my own terms.""You are not dying." The words came out before I could stop them, stupid and useless, because

POV: Kira"Mara Soto." His voice came through my door before I even got the chance to look through the peephole, low, certain, nothing like a knock from a neighbor or a delivery. "Or should I use Kira."My whole body went cold.I stood frozen for one full second, hand hovering over the lock, running through three years of contingency plans in my head, the go bag under my bed, the second phone taped behind the bathroom mirror, the route out the fire escape I had memorized my first week in this apartment and never once used.I opened the door instead. Running would only confirm what he already seemed to know."I do not know who that is," I said, keeping my voice as flat as I could manage, though my pulse was slamming hard enough that I was sure he could hear it from where he stood.Luciano Rodriguez leaned one shoulder against my doorframe like he had all the time in the world, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up, looking nothing like the exhausted man on the stairwell that morning and every