A Quiet Kind of Ruin

After a vicious family power struggle, I fled to a small border town in the south. I took on a new identity and found work in a flower shop. Everyone believed I was dead.

Then one day, someone from the family came to the shop to order flowers for the birthday party for Roman Jackson, the head of the Jackson family.

The person who arrived was my former Underboss.

She stared at me in shock and demanded to know why I had not returned to the Jackson family if I was still alive. She told me that Roman had kept watch over my grave for two years and that he had attempted suicide three times in the cemetery, each time stopped by someone else.

Roman was my ex-husband.

He had an adopted sister, Liliana. Fifteen years ago, her parents were gunned down while covering Roman's father's escape from a rival family. After that, Liliana became Roman's most cherished sister.

She tampered with my armored car. The brakes failed, and the vehicle plunged off a cliff. I broke three ribs. Roman mobilized every resource the family had and pulled me back from the brink of death.

She bribed my bodyguard and laced my red wine with a neurotoxin. I lay unconscious in the villa for three days and nights. Roman sealed off the entire city, hunted down everyone involved, and made them pay in blood.

She tried to kill me, and he saved me.

This absurd cycle went on for three years.

Until the last time.

She detonated a bomb at an arms deal I was overseeing, burning seventy percent of my body. As I was lifted onto the ambulance stretcher, I clutched Roman's suit and, with the last of my strength, begged him.

"Kill her, Roman. She sabotaged the deal. Those are the family rules."

He crouched down, his fingers brushing my bloodstained face. His voice was calm, almost cruel.

"Liliana didn't mean to. Let it go. For the sake of what her parents sacrificed for the family."

In that moment, my heart to him died completely.

Two years had passed since I bolted from the chaos that was the Jackson family showdown. I made my escape to a sleepy town on the edge of the south, where I traded my past for a new name and a gig at a local flower shop.

To the world, I was another casualty of Hudson City's most notorious mafia feud, presumed dead in the Jackson family's brutal power struggle.

I had even convinced myself of that lie.

There was an empty grave with my name on it in the family plot, where I would occasionally drop off the freshest white roses, a silent tribute to the 'Eleanor' everyone thought was gone.

However, everything changed the day the flower shop door swung open.

A big-shot client waltzed in, requesting a floral arrangement for the Jackson family patriarch, Roman Jackson's, birthday bash. I kept my head down, lost in the blooms, until a voice, shaky and filled with disbelief, cut through the silence. "Mrs. Jackson?"

The rose I was holding jabbed me, a sharp reminder of reality.

I looked up to find myself staring into wide eyes with shock. It was Aria, the Jackson family's former Underboss.

She was ghostly pale, her gaze fixed on me as if I were a specter. "You...you're alive? Why haven't you come back if you're alive? Don't you know, Mr. Jackson..."

Her voice broke, heavy with emotion. "He's been by your grave for two years straight! He's tried to end it all in that graveyard...three times! If they hadn't found him in time, he'd be..."

Roman, the man she was talking about, was my once-husband.

It felt like an icy hand had grabbed my heart and squeezed it tight.

However, the pain was fleeting, quickly replaced by numbness.

She wanted me to go back? To what? To the Jacksons? To him?

Aria had no clue about the real reason I supposedly died.

My death was a carefully crafted illusion.

Roman had an adopted sister, Liliana. Fifteen years back, her parents took bullets meant for Roman's dad and never made it out. Since then, Liliana was everything to Roman: his world, his heart.

Ever since I said 'I do' to Roman, the adopted sister turned into a real-life villain, hell-bent on snuffing me out.

The first time, she messed with my armored car. The brakes gave out, and I took a nosedive off a cliff, ending up with a trio of cracked ribs and a lung that felt like it had been stabbed.

Roman pulled out all the stops, calling in every favor the Jacksons had to offer, throwing cash at top-notch doctors to yank me back from the Grim Reaper's grip.

The second time, she got to my bodyguard, who slipped some nerve-wracking poison into my wine. I was out cold in the mansion for a solid 72 hours, teetering on the edge of brain-dead.

Roman lost it. He shut down Hudson City tighter than a drum, hunted down everyone involved, and made sure they paid. It was a river of blood for his trouble.

Her attacks, his rescues: it was like some twisted merry-go-round.

Every time I thought he would stand up for me, he would shield her at the eleventh hour, giving me that steady gaze and saying, "Eleanor, Liliana's just a kid. She doesn't get it. Cut her some slack, for her parents who laid down their lives for the Jacksons."

Once, twice, a dozen times...

Until the final straw, when Liliana blew up the arms deal I was running.

Kaboom!

The explosion sent me flying, my skin crisping up like burnt toast, with burns over most of my body.

Barely alive, strapped into an ambulance, I clung to Roman's bloody suit sleeve, pleading with every ounce of strength left.

"Take her out... Roman... She botched the deal... The family code says...she's got to go..."

He crouched beside me, his touch light on my wrecked face, but his voice was frosty as he said, "Eleanor, Liliana didn't mean it.

"Can't you just forgive her, for her parents who died for the Jacksons?"

'Forgive her. Always forgive her.' That was what echoed in my head.

In that moment, staring into the eyes of the man I had loved, shielded, and been let down by for three long years, any last bit of warmth in my heart fizzled out, leaving me stone-cold.