Chapter 3

The SUV bottomed out against a pothole, and a lance of white-hot agony shot up my leg.

I clamped my teeth into my lip, tasting copper, desperate to keep from screaming.

Every jolt in the road was a physical reminder.

Jax's hand on Chloe's back.

Jax's back turned to me.

A liability.

The word ricocheted inside my skull, louder than the roar of the engine.

"Stay with me, Savvy," Ben's voice was tight, laced with a panic I rarely heard from him. He was driving like a man possessed, weaving the black SUV through the gridlock of New York traffic.

"I made a call," he continued, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror. "I have a contact. A private airstrip in Jersey."

"Where?" I wheezed, clutching the towel Ben had pressed to my neck. The fabric was already heavy, soaked through with warm, sticky blood.

"Sicily," he said. "The Rossi family. They owe me a favor. A big one. Jax's reach is long, but the Rossis... they don't bow to New York thrones."

Sicily.

The old country.

I closed my eyes, the darkness rushing in to greet me.

I drifted into a fever dream.

I was back at the gala. The crystal chandelier was falling, a glittering guillotine.

But this time, it wasn't an accident.

Jax was holding the rope.

He looked at me, offered a cold, regretful smile, and let go.

I woke up screaming.

We were in a cavernous hangar. The acrid bite of jet fuel burned my nose, stinging my throat.

A man in a dark suit was waiting by the steps of a Gulfstream. He spoke rapid-fire Italian to Ben.

They loaded me onto a stretcher. The movement sent fresh shockwaves of pain through my body.

"You have to go," I told Ben, my fingers gripping his wrist with whatever feeble strength I had left. My hand was trembling violently. "If Jax finds out..."

"Let him find out," Ben spat, his jaw set in granite. "He broke the code tonight. You protect your own. He didn't."

"Go," I insisted, my voice barely a whisper. "I need eyes here. I need to know... everything."

Ben looked down at me. He saw the change in my eyes.

The girl who baked cookies for the crew was gone. Dead on the ballroom floor.

"I'm seeing you safely to the Rossis first," Ben promised, his voice dropping to a vow. "Then I go back. And I'll watch him burn."

I woke up three days later in a room that smelled of lemons and sea salt.

My leg was encased in a heavy cast.

My neck was bandaged tight, the pressure constant.

A doctor was standing over me, an older man with kind eyes but a mouth set in a grim line.

"You are lucky, Signorina," he said in heavily accented English. "The cut on your neck... two millimeters to the left, and you bleed out in three minutes."

He handed me a hand mirror.

I took it, my fingers stiff.

My face was pale, mottled with bruises.

But the neck...

An angry, jagged red line ran from just under my ear down to my collarbone.

It was ugly.

It was permanent.

"It will scar," the doctor said apologetically, clasping his hands behind his back. "Badly."

I lowered the mirror.

"Good," I said. My voice was a rasp, shredded by the trauma.

"Good?"

"It reminds me never to be stupid again."

Ben had left a burner phone on the nightstand.

It blinked with a message.

He's spinning the story. Says you had a mental breakdown. Says you ran away because you couldn't handle the pressure. He's playing the concerned leader.

I typed back with one hand, the keys clicking softly.

Let him talk.

A week later, I was sitting in a wheelchair on the terrace, looking out at the glittering expanse of the Mediterranean Sea.

I overheard Ben on the phone inside. He had stayed these few days just to ensure the security detail was impenetrable before returning to the States.

"It wasn't an accident, Marco," Ben was whispering, though the wind carried his voice to me. "I checked the security logs. The chandelier supports were cut manually. And Jax... he knew. I heard him talking to Julian. He needed a distraction to get Chloe out before the hit went down."

My blood ran cold.

It wasn't just that he chose her.

He knew the attack was coming.

He sacrificed the room. He sacrificed me. Just to solidify his alliance with the Davenports.

He didn't just let me get hurt.

He engineered the stage for it.

I looked down at my hands.

They were shaking.

Not from fear.

From rage.

Pure, unadulterated rage.

It burned hotter than the shattered bone in my leg.

I remembered the elders talking about loyalty. About family.

It was all a lie.

Just a pretty wrapper for their greed.

I wheeled myself back inside.

Ben hung up the phone immediately when he saw me.

"Savvy..."

"I need a tattoo artist," I said, my voice steady.

Ben blinked. "What? You're still healing."

"I need an artist who knows Kintsugi," I said. "The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold."

I touched the bandage on my neck.

"I'm not going to hide this scar, Ben. I'm going to highlight it. I want everyone to see exactly where he tried to break me."

"And then?" Ben asked softly.

I looked at the small wooden box on the table.

Inside was the bullet casing Jax gave me years ago.

The blood oath.

I picked up the box.

"And then," I said, staring at the brass, "I'm going to learn how to break him."