Chapter4

I count the days in darkness.

No windows, no clock—just the rhythm of changing guards to mark time.

Three times a day. Breakfast, dinner, night shift rotation.

I save a small piece of bread from each meal, hiding it under the straw to remind myself I'm still alive.

Today is day fourteen.

The wound on my shoulder has started to scab over, itching so badly it drives me mad. I don't dare scratch it.

The burns on my neck and collarbone are healing too, slowly. That patch of skin feels hard and uneven when I touch it, like something that doesn't belong to me.

I thought I was past pain. Physical pain, emotional pain—what haven't I tasted?

I was wrong.

The door opens in the afternoon.

It's time for the guard shift, but there's only one set of footsteps in the corridor.

I lift my head and see one of Marco's men standing in the doorway, holding something in his hands.

I recognize that box.

Ebony, palm-sized, with tarnished silver corners.

The carved pattern on the lid is an ancient Sicilian blessing motif. My mother gave it to my brother on his eighteenth birthday. After he died, I found it on his bedside table in his apartment, brought it back to the Rossi estate, and hid it in the deepest part of my closet.

Later, when I moved into the dungeon, it was confiscated.

Now it's here.

I push myself up, my knees shuffling across the hard bed, my heart slamming against my ribs.

I reach through the bars, my fingers trembling as I stretch toward the box.

"Give it back." My voice is so hoarse I barely recognize it. "That's my brother's—"

The guard steps back. He doesn't look at me. His face is completely blank.

"The Godfather's orders." He opens the box and takes out the small glass vial inside. "Dispose of things that shouldn't exist."

Shouldn't exist.

I freeze, not understanding those words.

Then I see him unscrew the cap of the glass vial.

No.

Time seems to slow down.

I watch him walk to the rusted sink against the wall, tip the vial upside down, and tilt it gently.

Ash-gray powder pours out silently, falling into the drain, swept away by a trickle of stagnant water, disappearing in an instant. Not even a trace left behind.

That was my brother.

That was the last family I had in this world.

That was the only thing I could hold against my chest after he left, pretending he was still here.

No—

I lunge at the cell door. The iron bars slam into the wound on my shoulder, the pain so sharp my vision goes black.

My hands reach out desperately, nails clawing at air, grabbing nothing. An inhuman howl tears from my throat.

"Stop! Stop it—that's my brother! That's my brother—"

The guard places the empty vial back in the box, along with a few old photographs, and tosses it carelessly on the floor.

He turns around, his steps steady, and walks away without looking back.

The iron door locks again.

I'm alone in the cell once more, with nothing but that overturned, empty ebony box on the floor.

I don't know how I crawled over to it.

My knees scrape across the rough stone floor, tearing the skin. I don't feel it.

I pick up the box, cradling it in my palms, turning it over and over.

Inside the lid, there's still a small piece of yellowed tape my brother put there, with our old home address written on it. The handwriting has faded beyond recognition.

The vial is completely empty. Not even a speck of ash remains.

I clutch this empty box, kneeling on the cold stone floor, my shoulders shaking violently.

I wait for the tears to come, wait to sob like I used to.

But they don't.

My eyes are dry. Dry from the inside out.

Franco.

That name rolls through my heart like it's rolling across scorched earth, unable to ignite anything.

The fire burned out long ago, leaving only ashes, and now even the ashes have been washed down the drain.

He knew what this box meant to me.

He saw me cry while holding it, saw me sit with it all night on my brother's death anniversary.

Seven years ago, he was the one who brought this box back from my brother's apartment and handed it to me.

He said, This is what your brother left you. Keep it safe.

Turns out every word was charity all along.

Including this box.

Including those seven years.

Including everything I thought had happened.

Now he's decided this thing shouldn't exist anymore, so he had someone pour it down the drain.

Just like he decided I shouldn't exist anymore, so he personally hammered in seventeen steel nails.

I was never his woman. I never was.

I wasn't even the orphan girl under his protection.

I was just something that had occupied space too long, an eyesore.

Now he has a new girl to protect, and my existence is an obstacle.

My longing, my pain, the last scraps of what I cherished—all just garbage that needs to be cleared away.

I press the empty box tight against my chest, curling my back, making myself as small as possible.

I stay in that position from afternoon until deep into the night.

When footsteps echo down the corridor at the end of the hall—the night shift changing—I move.

I pull out the hairpin I've hidden in my hair for two weeks.

The one I hooked off the floor when Nico bent down earlier, gripping it in my palm where no one could see.

I straighten the hairpin and insert it into the lock.

Click.

I push open the door and move along the wall. Around the corner, the young guard who just came on shift is bent over, lighting a cigarette.

I don't give him the chance to light it.

I approach from behind and use all my strength to slam the rock I brought from my cell into the back of his neck.

He goes down without even crying out.

I don't know when the rain started.

I stand at the side door leading from the dungeon to the garden as ice-cold rain pours down on me, instantly soaking through my thin, bloodstained dress.

When the rainwater touches my wounds, sharp pain reawakens my nerves.

I lift my head, letting the rain hammer my face, my ugly, scabbed neck and collarbone.

Then I step forward into the rainy night.

Behind me, the Rossi family estate blazes with light.

In one of those windows, the old doctor is pushing a new fever-reducing injection into the veins of Franco Rossi, who's been burning with fever and unconscious.

He's been feverish for three days, the wound infection triggering severe inflammation, delirious and mumbling something repeatedly.

The old doctor leans in to listen, catching only broken syllables.

He can't make out that it's someone's name.

I can't hear it either.

I just walk into the rain, into the darkness of this city, into a future without Franco Rossi.