Left To Die, Finally Free
At the Costa family's annual capo banquet, Marco Costa declared the family would extend protection to one woman only: Rosa Frost, his childhood sweetheart, newly divorced and newly returned to the family fold.
One by one, the other women slipped away into the night with their money, their dignity, and fresh protectors already lined up.
I, Viola Rossi, once his Donna, was severed from the Costa family entirely, with nowhere left to go.
Twenty-one years prior, The System ripped me into this life with a brutal mandate: make one of four made men fall irrevocably in love with me, and I'd earn my way back to my real life with a healthy body.
I failed.
Every single one of them chose Rosa.
The system's final mercy: die here, go home.
I stood in a rotting Brooklyn dock warehouse, gun in hand, and closed my eyes.
Right as darkness closed in, a raw, raging scream of my name tore through the silence, like the man shouting would burn the whole world apart to reach me.