Part 2After I Died, Everyone Regretted It

Long after they left, I still could not calm down. I kept thinking about the year Celeste first came to the De Luca family.

That year she was six and I was eight.

Celeste's parents, Victor and Elena Caruso, had taken the bullets meant for Marco and Isabella in an ambush. Afterward, my parents brought Celeste to the estate and told me she was my sister now.

At first I was naive enough to think I had a little sister to protect.

When Celeste had nightmares I slept beside her. When she was afraid to go to school alone I walked her to the classroom every day. The first time she called me her sister, I gave her every piece of candy my grandmother had sent me.

Everything changed after that.

My birthday party was cancelled because she dreamed about her parents. Isabella said she had just lost her family and I should be understanding.

There was one place left at the church academy, and Marco gave it to her. He said I was their own daughter and I would get another chance later.

She liked the ruby brooch my grandmother left me, so Isabella took it straight out of my jewelry box. She said Celeste had nothing and I should not be petty.

I cried about it. I argued about it. Every argument made them a little more disappointed in me.

"Why are you getting more difficult every year?"

"Celeste has no parents left. Why do you always have to compete with her?"

"She sees you as her sister, and all you do is target her."

Over time, I became the jealous, spoiled, poisonous daughter in their eyes. All Celeste had to do was cry, and they assumed I had bullied her.

The debt they owed for having their lives saved could never be repaid, so Marco and Isabella chose to pay it with me.

Seven years ago, I had just turned twenty when a De Luca convoy carrying ledgers and cash was ambushed in the south district. Six of our people died, and every core route was exposed.

That route existed in only one place: my encrypted notebook.

At the family meeting, Celeste produced a page torn out of the cipher book.

"I saw Sofia meeting members of the Bertini family at the docks. She said Mom and Dad play favorites and she was going to make the whole Family pay."

I pointed out at once that the tear ran the wrong way. Celeste had also borrowed the family seal stamped on the route map three days earlier in the name of her charity foundation.

I threw myself at Marco and Isabella's feet and begged them to pull the security footage, check the fingerprints on the cipher book, and believe me.

No one was willing to believe me. My parents looked at me with nothing in their eyes but disgust and disappointment.

"Celeste's parents gave their lives to protect this family. She would never sell us out," Isabella said. "And you still want to frame her?"

Marco signed the hostage agreement on the spot and handed me to the Bertini family to settle the blood debt.

"When the war is over, I'll bring you home."

I believed him.

They put me in a cellar, chained my ankle, and tried to force the rest of the harbor routes out of me. Every time I was ready to give up, I thought about Marco's promise.

The war between the two families ended three months later.

No one came for me.

I learned afterward that they had taken Celeste to Europe and thrown her a lavish coming-of-age party.

Not until my seven hundredth day in that cellar, when a warehouse at the docks caught fire, did I crawl out through the garbage duct in the confusion.

That night I collapsed by the sea with my lungs full of smoke and half a chain still hanging from my ankle.

A hospital run by Santa Maria Church saved me. I changed my name to Nora Vale and never went back to the De Luca family.

I thought my heart had already died.

I thought that if I hid far enough away, they could no longer hurt me.

I was wrong.

Now they were back.