I returned to the Genovese estate one final time. I walked through the rooms where I had grown up, where the ghosts of my parents still lingered in the grain of the wood and the scent of old roses. I gathered every item connected to Giancarlo Valenti and Salvatore Monreale. Photographs, letters, gifts, tokens of alliances that had never been real. I burned them in the courtyard fireplace and watched the smoke curl into the evening sky.
Then I walked out the front door, climbed into the waiting car, and did not look back.
Giancarlo and Salvatore were not my protectors. They were not my allies. They were not my future.
I would carve that future myself. With my own hands, my own mind, my own blood. For Nonna. For the Genovese name. For the girl who had died once and refused to die again.
