I was the most untouchable daughter in the Moretti family. Then my brother Eli had me locked in the farm’s lower cellar under the name of “family correction.” I slept on concrete for three solid months. Every day I fought rats for whatever scraps they threw through the slot. If I resisted, the men would hold my head in a barrel of cold water, or press a cattle prod against my ribs. The only thing that kept me alive was the mute errand boy who brought my meals. He would slip me antibiotics in secret, sit quietly while I sobbed and begged him to get me out. He even promised to help me escape. I swore that when I got out, I would tell my brother: I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not the same anymore. Then one day I collapsed on the stone floor with a fever so high my heart gave out. I was convulsing in the dark when I watched the mute man pull off his hood and peel away the fake scar beneath it. The face underneath was Sebastian’s. My fiancé. “This is what you get for slipping something into Zara’s drink. Even if it was just a laxative.” “Consider three months in a cellar a fair trade for the scare you gave her.” “Kill the feed, Marco. Zara says watching me work this hard is breaking her heart.” I watched Sebastian take Zara’s hand and walk toward the stairs. My heart stopped. I drifted upward, floating above the stone floor, looking down at my own body. Covered in filth. Dirt packed under every fingernail. “Cut.” Marco’s voice cracked with satisfaction. “Perfect — absolutely perfect. That dying look in her eyes is incredible!” “Get me a close-up. The Don will want to see this.” Every camera in the cellar swung toward my face at once. A pair of polished oxfords appeared beside my head. Sebastian. He pressed a handkerchief over his nose and looked down at me with contempt. “Okay. Stop performing. Marco already called it — why are you still on the ground?” “Getting too deep into it?” My body rocked slightly as he nudged it with his foot. No response. “Ava Moretti.” Sebastian frowned. “Are you seriously holding your breath this long just to milk the sympathy angle?” “Three months in a cellar really did expand your lung capacity.” I floated above him, screaming into the nothing. “I’m not performing! Sebastian — I’m actually dead! Look at me!” “Don’t be too hard on her, Sebastian.” A black umbrella opened over his head. Zara Cole stepped around the drain and took his arm. “She really was trying her best this time to make it up to me.” “Look at the state of her. So grimy — someone who didn’t know better would think she actually lived down here.” She said it lightly, her eyes skimming over my body on the ground. A slow clap started somewhere nearby. My brother — Eli Moretti, heir to the family, the man every underboss in the city answered to — stepped out from behind the monitor. He looked down at my corpse from above. “Not bad. Three months and she actually got better at this.” He turned to Marco. “Pull that footage and cut it into the reel. Title it: A Moretti Daughter’s Confession.” “That last moment — the best thing she’s ever put on camera.” “I almost believed her.” Looking at my brother, something tore open inside me. Eli. This isn’t an act. I’m in real pain. Real, actual… pain. I’m dying. “Eli,” Marco asked quietly, “do we… wake the Miss now?” “Don’t let her track that filth into my car. It’s disgusting.” Eli barely glanced at me. “It’ll make Zara sick — she’s been under the weather.” “Then…” “Wrap her in a tarp and put her in the trunk.” “Since she’s so committed to playing dead, she can stay in character the whole ride home.” “Saves me from listening to whatever speech she had planned.” The men scrambled to obey. I watched two of them lift my stiff body and fold it into a plastic tarp. Sebastian was already fixing Zara’s rain-damp hair. He didn’t glance at me once. The trunk slammed shut. The engine turned over. My head hit the spare tire with a dull thud. I floated beside myself in the dark, and felt something almost like the urge to laugh. I remembered being eighteen — I bumped my head on a car door once, left a small red mark. Eli saw it and didn’t say a single word before he picked up a tire iron and destroyed the car. “Anything that hurts my little sister,” he’d said, “doesn’t deserve to exist.” And now my corpse was rattling around in the trunk of his car. Was that all an act too, Eli? Or is it simply that the moment Zara Cole walked into our lives, your own sister stopped being worth keeping? Zara turned from the front passenger seat and glanced toward the trunk. “Eli, do you think Ava will be upset with us for putting her back there when she wakes up?” Eli watched the road, the trunk’s direction a flicker in his rearview mirror. He let out a short, cold breath. “She doesn’t get to be upset. I have plenty of ways to keep her quiet once we’re home.” “The family sit-down is already set for tomorrow.” “If she dares cause a scene, I’ll ship her back to that cellar for another three months.” From the back seat, Sebastian added without looking up: “She’d better behave.” “Zara spent three days in the hospital over what Ava put in her drink.” “Three months is the bare minimum.” I drifted along the ceiling of the car, watching the three of them. I never put anything in Zara’s drink. Zara stole my heart medication and took it herself, then turned around and told everyone I tried to poison her. No one believed me. And now I can’t explain it to anyone, ever again. The car bounced along the mountain road, my body knocking against the trunk walls the whole way. When the car finally rolled through the gates of the Moretti estate, Eli popped the trunk and dragged the tarp out himself, one of the housemen taking the other end. One step. Two. Three. My head hit every stone step on the way up. The sound echoed sharp and hollow in the rain. My soul flinched. I reached out instinctively to shield my own skull — and my hands passed through the air. “Heavy,” Eli muttered, disgusted. “If she’s going to play dead, the least she could do is lose some weight.” He dragged the tarp into the main hall and let it drop onto the marble floor. The wrap tore open. My face, caked in filth, lips turning purple, eyes sealed shut, was exposed to the light. Eli stood over me and nudged my leg with his foot. “We’re home. Drop the act. Go clean up and don’t get the floors dirty.” I want to, Eli. I really do. But I can’t. Zara curled closer to Sebastian and murmured: “Did Ava actually pass out? Her color looks… wrong.” “That’s the cold.” Sebastian cut her off. “She was down there three months. Her circulation is shot.” “She fakes this all the time to get out of things.” “The doctor said her health is fine — she can handle it.” Eli’s patience ran out. He crossed the room, turned the thermostat down to its lowest setting, and walked away. “Fine. She wants to lie there — let her lie there.” “Nobody touches her or gives her a blanket tonight. We’ll see how long this lasts.” The three of them went upstairs. Only the cold air remained, moving slowly over my body on the floor. I floated above myself — above that small, alone shape on the marble — and I wanted to cry. But ghosts don’t have tears.
I kept watch through the night. By morning, the bruising had crept all the way up my neck and down both arms. The Moretti household staff arrived early. Today was the family sit-down Eli had organized — every capo, every underboss, every allied don in the region had been summoned to witness what he was calling a “public correction.” I was supposed to stand before them all and apologize. The woman they sent to prepare me reached for my hand, then recoiled. “She’s — cold. Mr. Moretti, her temperature is…” Eli was selecting a tie. He glanced over. “She spent three months underground. Cold hands are expected.” “She probably trained herself to stay still to sell the suffering angle.” “Just put some color on her face. She looks appalling.” “And those purple patches on her neck—” Sebastian came down the stairs. “Bruising from the cellar. Cover it. Today’s theme is reconciliation — we’re not showing up looking like we ran a torture operation.” The woman said nothing more and pressed concealer into my skin with hands that had not stopped trembling. Floating at a distance, I found it almost funny. Concealer could cover the discoloration. Nothing could cover the smell of death. “Get that jacket off her. She reeks.” Zara came downstairs and pointed at a white dress hanging on the rack. “Put her in that.” It was something Zara had worn once and discarded. The size was wrong. Too small. Two housewomen tried to dress me. That’s when the problem became clear. Rigor mortis. My limbs had locked rigid. They couldn’t bend my arms. One of them tried several times and said, “Mr. Moretti, she’s not cooperating.” “Her arms won’t move. She’s fighting us.” Eli’s expression darkened. He set his coffee cup down hard. “Ava Moretti. How much longer are you going to drag this out?” “If you won’t put the dress on, you can walk in there as you are.” My body, naturally, gave no answer. Sebastian crossed the room in four steps. “If you want to play stubborn, fine.” He grabbed my left arm and wrenched it outward. The sound of bone fracturing carried across the entire hall. My soul lurched upward. I screamed — then remembered there was nothing left to feel pain. “There. Strong grip for someone supposedly incapacitated.” Sebastian let go. My arm dropped at a wrong angle, bent where arms should not bend. “Stop the dramatics and get dressed.” He assumed it was defiance. That was all. The housewomen, hands shaking, worked the white dress onto my body. The broken arm required a long glove to hide the shape of it. They folded both hands over my lap and arranged them as best they could. I was dressed, positioned, and styled without a single word of protest from me. Foundation erased the purple of my lips. Concealer buried the bruising on my neck. A high collar covered the marks where the restraints had been locked around my throat in the cellar. Eli walked a slow circle around the wheelchair and nodded. “That’s more like it.” “Three months actually did something. That attitude is gone.” “When she’s quiet, she looks just like she used to.” He reached out and patted my face — cold, stiff, unyielding. “When we get to the venue — if you embarrass this family, or say a single word out of turn, I will make sure you spend the rest of your life wishing you’d stayed in that cellar.” Don’t worry, Eli. In this chair is where I’ll stay. And I will never speak again. “Let’s go. Don’t keep the families waiting.” A houseman wheeled me out through the front door. The sun was sharp. But I couldn’t feel its warmth. The hall where the sit-down was being held was already packed — capos, underbosses, allied heads, all of them in good suits with bad histories. Zara had changed into a fitted black dress; her makeup artist had given her the practiced look of a fragile, grievously wronged woman. While Eli and Sebastian worked the room, Zara drifted over to my wheelchair and crouched beside me. “Ava. You’re so quiet today. I love it.” She pressed her thumb into my side hard and twisted. “You always used to call me a pretty face with no spine. Nothing to say now?” “Tired? Or just out of ideas?” “Don’t worry. There are a few more surprises waiting for you up at that table.” I didn’t respond. Zara tilted her head. “You really can hold a grudge. But then you’re about to lose the engagement anyway. Might as well go quietly.” Lose the engagement? I looked over at Sebastian sharply. He was standing under the chandeliers, leaning toward Eli, murmuring something low. I drifted close enough to hear. “Today’s the right moment. In front of every head in the room. The whole commission watching.” “I’m cutting this loose permanently.” Eli was quiet for a beat. He looked toward my corner of the room. “She brought it on herself. No one else to blame.” In that moment, my soul felt it again — the same gutting pain. So even the last thing I had left — my name, my place in this family, the engagement you chose for me — means nothing. I don’t even get the dignity of being considered a person worth keeping.
“Three — two — one.” The lights blazed on. They wheeled me onto the stage. The restraints kept me upright in the chair, spine straight. Every head in the room turned. The capos. The underbosses. The allied heads who had known me since I was a child sitting under my father’s table playing with his cufflinks. A murmur moved through the room. 【Is that the Moretti girl? Why is she just sitting there like a mannequin?】 【Three months in a cellar broke her.】 【Good. Heard she tried to poison the woman Eli brought under family protection.】 The whispers reached me, word for word. Eli lifted his hand for silence. His expression was perfectly calibrated, a man doing something painful because it was necessary. “Gentlemen. Thank you for coming.” “The only reason we are here today is to confess in the open. No closed doors. No whispers.” He gestured to me. “My younger sister, Ava Moretti, acted out of jealousy and recklessness, causing serious harm to a innocent woman, Zara Cole.” “After three months of correction, she has confronted the consequences of her actions.” “She asked to come here today, in front of every head at this table, to apologize in person.” Murmurs moved around the room. 【Eli Moretti handling his own blood in the open — that’s a don who means what he says.】 【She poisoned a civilian. Three months is light.】 【Make her apologize on her knees.】 Eli turned his back to the room and moved to stand in front of me, blocking half the frame. “Stop this. Talk. Tell them what you did wrong.” I had nothing to give him. He pinched the soft skin under my arm, hard. My body shifted with the pressure, my head dropping lower. Nothing more. Zara stepped in, playing the peacemaker flawlessly. “Eli, don’t. She’s clearly overwhelmed with remorse.” “It’s fine. I forgive her.” She picked up a glass of red wine and pressed it into my broken arm’s hand. “Drink with me, Ava. We move forward together.” The glass tilted. Wine ran down the front of the white dress. My body didn’t react. Zara turned to the room with wounded eyes. “She still can’t look at me. I suppose she hasn’t forgiven herself yet.” 【Zara Cole is a saint. Ava doesn’t deserve it.】 【Someone drag her out of that chair.】 The old capo near the back was no longer murmuring. He was watching my hand. The way it had fallen. The angle of it. He had seen enough bodies in his life to know what a hand looked like when no one was home inside it. Sebastian took the floor and walked to center stage. He stood over my wheelchair and looked down at me. “Since Ava Moretti insists on silence, I have nothing more to protect.” He reached into his jacket and withdrew a small velvet box. What was left of my soul surged with a single reflex of hope. Our ring? He opened the box. Inside was something new — a pink diamond, gleaming, unfamiliar. Sebastian turned away from me. In front of my corpse, in front of every head of every family in the city, he lowered himself onto one knee before Zara Cole. The room went very still. “Zara Cole.” “For three years, you’ve been the constant I held onto.” “Your honesty, your loyalty — you are everything I ever wanted beside me.” He rose. He turned back toward me, and his voice went cold. “I, Sebastian Vane, formally dissolve my engagement to Ava Moretti.” “A woman this cowardly, this incapable of remorse, has no place in my family or in this world.” Every word landed somewhere in the place my soul used to live. He proposed to another woman in front of my corpse. He ground my name into the floor of my own family’s hall and pressed his heel into it. “Sebastian—” Zara’s voice broke beautifully. “I—” Sebastian reached into his other pocket and produced the plain silver band I had given him three years ago. He tossed it sideways without looking. It hit the rim of a waste bin at the edge of the room with a sharp metallic ring and dropped inside. “From today, Zara is the only woman I stand beside.” He slipped the pink diamond onto her finger. She leaned up and kissed him. The room erupted — applause from some, silence from others. In every eye that turned toward me, the background was the same: a girl in a white dress, slumped in a wheelchair, wine-stained, motionless, head bowed. Three years ago, Sebastian had knelt in the snow outside my apartment for three days and three nights to ask me to marry him. His lips had gone pale from the cold. He had gripped my hands and sworn: “Ava, this ring is my life. The moment you accept it, my life belongs to you.” Your life was cheap, Sebastian. Cheaper than I knew. The moment Zara appeared, every last scrap of patience and love you had ever given me transferred to her. I didn’t change. You just stopped looking at me. The ring in the waste bin. That’s where we ended up — you and me and every promise we ever made. Rotting in the same place.
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