Chapter 2

Alessia POV:

Before Chiara, I had a future. A full scholarship to a prestigious art school on the East Coast. Dreams of galleries and studios, of a life painted in color instead of blood.

Chiara, with her feigned heart condition and bottomless needs, had devoured it all. My college fund was siphoned off for her "specialists" and "treatments." My dreams were dismissed as selfish fantasies.

Now, my only future was a one-way ticket to Dominica. The confirmation email had landed in my inbox a few hours after my acceptance. A car would pick me up in three days. Three days to endure this place I once called home.

Drawn by a morbid curiosity, I went downstairs. The formal dining room glowed with candlelight, a feast sprawling across the mahogany table. It was a celebration.

For Chiara's "recovery."

She was nestled against Dante's side, looking pale and lovely in a silk dress. My mother fussed over her, my father watched her with adoration. They were a perfect family.

And I was a ghost at their feast.

No one acknowledged me until Dante finally looked up, his eyes dark and unfathomable. "Alia. Come, sit."

It was an order, not an invitation.

I held my ground by the door.

Chiara, playing her part to perfection, sighed weakly. "Dante, darling, could you peel a grape for me? My fingers are just so tired."

For a fraction of a second, he hesitated. A flicker of conflict-a storm I recognized-crossed his face before it was smoothed away. He picked up a grape, his large, capable hands-hands that had built a criminal empire, hands that had once held me with such tenderness-peeled the thin skin with practiced care.

Something inside me snapped. Quietly. Irrevocably.

I turned to leave.

"Desagradecida," my mother hissed, the Spanish word for ungrateful slicing through the air like a whip.

"She's just jealous of Chiara," my father added, his tone dripping with disdain. "Always has been."

They thought I wouldn't understand. They assumed seven years in a federal penitentiary had left me uneducated, broken. But prison hadn't broken me; it had been my university. I'd learned to survive. To listen. And to navigate the intricate hierarchies and alliances behind bars, I had mastered multiple languages, Spanish chief among them.

I understood every venomous word.

A cold resolve settled deep in my bones. I didn't go back to the storage room. I walked straight through the grand foyer, past the disapproving stare of the butler, and out the heavy oak doors.

The cool night air struck my face. I kept walking, down the long, manicured driveway, until the oppressive weight of the estate was behind me.

It was only then, as my cheap prison-issue shoes hit the public pavement, that I remembered.

It was my birthday.

Another milestone they had forgotten. Another piece of me they had discarded.

I wasn't just leaving. I was erasing them.