After Prison I’m Done Playing Second

I was just about to fall asleep when I heard an engine downstairs.

More than one.

Usually, when Reginald left for Felicia, he was gone all night.

I frowned and went to the window. His armored Cadillac was in the driveway, and right behind it was a pink Maserati.

Felicia’s car.

My breath hitched. He brought her here?

I heard the front door open, then footsteps and low voices.

Silently, I went to my door and cracked it open.

"Reginald, are you sure this is a good idea?" It was Felicia's voice, soft and weak like always. "Now that my sister is back, shouldn't Leo be with her?"

"No." Reginald's voice was ice. "Rosabella was always spoiled. Three years in prison... it broke something in her. I won't let her near the heir."

Every word was a knife in my chest.

"But what if she..." Felicia trailed off. "What if she asks for a divorce?"

Reginald let out a short, confident laugh that made me sick.

"She won't, Felicia. She can't live without me."

I closed my eyes, and the memories flooded in.

Exile. Sent to Sicily at eight years old because my father's business was weak.

"Your parents abandoned you!" The taunts of the other children.

Five years later, I came home. But it wasn't my home anymore. Felicia had my room. My photos were gone, replaced by hers. Her sweet smile, her eyes full of poison.

Then Michael, my first love at fifteen. The roses he gave me. The next day, Felicia's tears. "She pushed me down the stairs, Papa!"

Locked in the freezing cellar all night. A fever of 104.

Waking up to hear Felicia bragging to her friends. "Michael's my boyfriend now."

After that, I gave up on trying to earn my parents' love. I rebelled. I rode motorcycles, went to underground casinos, drank all night. Anything to forget the pain.

Until Reginald. The heir to the Falcone family. Handsome, cold, powerful. He looked at me differently.

"You like photography?" he asked, nodding at the camera in my hands.

"Yeah," I said, guarded. Felicia had just "accidentally" broken my last one. This was a new one I'd bought with my own money.

"Then do it," Reginald said. "A mafia princess can be a photographer, too."

It was the first time anyone had ever supported my dream.

Then Reginald again. The car bomb at my birthday party. The explosion. He ran into the fire, pulling me from the wreckage without a second thought.

"I won't let anyone hurt you," he'd choked out, holding my bloody body, his own voice shaking.

In that moment, I thought I had found the light of my life.

But all of that was gone.

Three years in prison taught me one thing: anger and tears are a luxury. Only a cool head keeps you alive. In that place, where you only got a meal if you knelt and let someone stomp your head into the dirt, nothing mattered anymore.

No one is so important that you can't live without them. I could live just fine without Reginald.

I walked silently back into my room and pulled open the bottom drawer of my wardrobe.

Then, I picked up the divorce papers and walked, one step at a time, to face Reginald.