Chapter 3

I spent four hours on my knees in the snow before the darkness took me.

What followed was a long stretch of nothing — fever dreams, blackouts, days bleeding into each other.

More than twenty days. Sophia — my only friend, the De Luca family's private physician — snuck in IV bags when she could. Without her, I wouldn't have made it.

When I finally came back, I was on the damp mattress in the basement. Sophia sat beside me — red-eyed, jaw tight — pressing two pills into my palm.

"Are you out of your mind?" Her voice was low, but the fury wasn't.

"Your organs were shutting down. This fever almost killed you." She grabbed my wrist. "Tell him the truth. Tell that bastard why you really left."

"Sophia." I dry-swallowed the pills. Bitterness coated the back of my throat. "It doesn't matter anymore."

Even if Victor knew — then what? The disease didn't negotiate. The ending was written.

I wasn't about to watch pity move across his face, warmth handed out of guilt, tenderness that was really just obligation in disguise.

Let him hate me. Cleaner that way.

The basement door swung open.

Lilia walked in on heels that cracked against the concrete like gunshots, a silver chain swaying from one hand.

My breath locked.

The pocket watch. My mother's. The only photograph I had left of her was inside that case.

I'd kept it in the hidden seam beneath my pillow, but Lilia had gone through my things while I was out cold.

"Oh, you're awake." She caught my expression and smiled wider.

She held the watch up, let it spin on its chain. "I figured it had to be something. But it's just a beat-up old watch." A tilt of her head. "God, Evelyn. This is what you've been holding onto?"

"Give it back." I threw off the blanket and pushed myself upright.

My legs gave out instantly. The floor came up hard.

"You want it?" Lilia stepped closer, looked down at me — then opened her fingers.

The watch hit the concrete. A sharp crack. Then silence.

The glass face shattered. Gears skittered across the floor. And across my mother's photograph, a long jagged tear opened like a wound.

"Oops." Lilia pressed two fingers to her mouth, her voice pitched into mock shock. "I'm so clumsy."

One second I was on the floor.

Then my hands were around her throat — vision gone red, a sound tearing out of me I didn't recognize as my own.

"I'll kill you — I'll KILL you —"

Lilia screamed. "Victor! Help me!"

The door exploded inward. Something hit me hard and I slammed into the wall, ribs first.

"Evelyn." Victor's voice came back sharp. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He crossed to Lilia in three strides and pulled her against him, one arm locked across her shoulders, putting himself between her and me.

I lay face-down on the floor, looking at the wreckage — splintered gears, cracked glass, the photograph with its long ugly tear.

The tears came before I could stop them. Quiet and useless.

I reached for the photograph.

A shoe came down across my knuckles. Pressed. Ground slowly.

I clenched my jaw and didn't make a sound. Just stared at the shoe.

"Over a watch." His voice dropped to something colder.

He looked down at me "You tried to choke her over a WATCH." A pause. "Have you forgotten what you are here?"

"That was my mother's." The words scraped out of me.

"So what?"

His gaze moved to the debris around my hand. Something shifted at the corner of his mouth.

"Two million dollars was enough to make you walk away once. I'm asking for less. Apologize to Lilia. Get on your knees, put your head down, tell her you were wrong. Do that, and you can pick up your garbage."

The basement went very quiet.

Beside me, Sophia was trembling. I caught her eye and held it until she stilled.

I looked at Victor's face — the satisfaction just beneath the surface, the anticipation of watching me fight back, flush and shake and demand answers the way I used to.

He wanted the version of me who still burned. But he didn't know there was almost nothing left to burn.

I pulled my bleeding hand back slowly. Turned to Lilia.

I lowered myself to both knees. Kept my eyes down.

"I'm sorry, Lilia." My voice came out level. "I was wrong."

Victor got completely still. The satisfaction drained out of him.

He'd wanted resistance. He'd wanted to win something. I hadn't given him that.

I turned back to the floor and started picking up pieces. Shard by shard.

My fingertips found the glass before my eyes did, and the cuts came quick and clean, blood spreading across my palm. I didn't feel it.

I was trying to fit the gears back together, but they were too small and there were too many and some had gone too far.

Like my body. Past the point of repair.

Victor moved. He grabbed my collar and hauled me to my feet.

"Don't look at me like that." His voice cracked through the middle. "Don't you dare look at me like you're already dead."

There was something in his eyes. Not cruelty. Something that looked, just for a second, almost like fear.

"You're right," I said quietly. "This is my consequence." I held his gaze. "But Victor — you couldn't pay back what you owe."

He went rigid.

"Am I free to go?" I asked softly.

The silence stretched. Then he kicked a chair into the wall.

"Get out of my face," he snarled.

I closed my bleeding fist around the wreckage, stood up, and walked back to the mattress.

Sixty days.