Left To Die, Finally Free

The East River hit like a block of solid ice, searing straight through my clothes to the bone.

I didn't fight it.

I let the current drag me down, my mind fixed on one thing: home.

Would Mom bake her chocolate cake now?

Then a hand locked around my wrist, yanking me back up to the surface.

I hacked up river water, as a voice roared in my ear.

"Viola Rossi! Are you out of your fucking mind?!"

I blinked the water from my eyes.

Draven was on the shore beside me, face white as a sheet, coughing hard.

But his eyes never left mine, sharp and furious.

"Rosa's suffered enough because of you," he snarled.

"You think dying lets you weasel out of what you did?"

I stared at him, quiet.

"You've spent four years breaking me down. Isn't my death exactly what you wanted?"

He froze.

For a second.

His eyes went red, his jaw tight.

"Rosa just got back," he rasped, voice breaking.

"You owe her an apology. At the very least."

Looking at the wet, red-rimmed anger in his eyes, a dull ache twisted in my chest.

I remembered the Draven from four years ago, broken after the Valentino family hit, sitting alone in the dark, eyes burning with rage and grief until I'd knelt down and said, "C'mon. You have to sleep."

But what right did he have to hurt?

Four years of his maid's torments, none happened without his say-so.

Fine.

They wouldn't let me die here.

I turned and walked toward the highway, and he followed, step for step.

He said, voice cold.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight until you're off Costa property. I'm taking you to Vincent. After that, you live or die? I don't give a fuck."

I stopped.

Vincent Rossi, my own blood brother, the Rossi family underboss.

The man who'd disowned me.

I hadn't set foot in the Rossi house since he'd thrown me out.

But maybe going back was the fastest way to get what I wanted.

The Rossi estate was a flurry of chaos.

Maids rushed to clean Rosa's suite, the yard overflowing with her favorite datura flowers.

Only my brother would plant poison in his own backyard.

Vincent stood in the drive, a bright smile I hadn't seen in years on his face, holding a gift box.

The smile died the second he saw me.

"You've got some nerve showing up here," he said, flat.

I stood frozen.

This was the brother I'd grown up with.

Mom and Dad dead before we hit our teens, it had just been the two of us.

I'd spent years schmoozing other crews, cutting deals, risking my life to get him a seat at the Costa table.

I remembered the night I'd driven off a cliff to outrun the cops, and he'd burst into the hospital half-naked, sobbing, holding me tight.

I don't care about the power, he'd said.

If I lose you, I lose everything.

Then Rosa showed up.

The girl with the sad eyes and the fake sob story, and suddenly I wasn't his sister anymore.

He'd quit the family's drug business to cook up fancy meds for her "condition", snapped at me for calling her out on spitting them out.

When she vanished, he'd wiped my name from the family books.

"You don't come back until she does," he'd said.

Now he stood still, stared at me.

Draven shifted, voice tight.

"Rosa's back. Marco cut loose every other woman. She snapped. Tried to kill herself twice tonight, right in front of me."

Vincent scoffed, shaking his head.

"You're the sharpest consigliere in the Five Families, and you fell for it?"

He smirked at me.

"I know Viola. She'd never actually go through with it."

Draven's shoulders relaxed, a bitter, self-deprecating laugh huffing out of him, like he was mocking his own panic.

Vincent lifted the box, his eyes cold with contempt when he looked at me.

"I'm taking this to Rosa. I don't have time for your games. Be gone before I get back, or—"

He never finished the sentence.

I plucked a datura petal from the bush beside me, and put it in my mouth.

Vincent's face went white as a sheet.