Chapter 3

The basement reeks of iron and burnt flesh.

The Lucchese hitman hangs suspended by iron chains. His flesh is torn to shreds, and he barely clings to life.

Vittorio stands at the edge of the blood pool. He pulls out his gun, shoves the barrel straight into the bullet wound in the hitman's thigh, and twists it hard.

"Argh!" The hitman screams in pure agony.

"Talk."

"What intel did my wife feed you? What was your signal?"

He needs solid proof. He needs this confession to shut Isabella up and prove to everyone that throwing Evelyn in that freezer was the right call.

I hover in the corner, watching the man I loved for three years. A phantom pain tears through my chest.

The hitman looks up at Vittorio and suddenly bursts into maniacal laughter.

"Intel? Signal?"

"Vittorio, you are a fucking idiot!"

Vittorio's gaze hardens. He pulls back the hammer.

"Shoot me! I am dead anyway!" the hitman roars. "You think that woman was with us? Bullshit! When I breached the second floor, my gun was pointed right at your sister's head!"

Vittorio's finger freezes.

"It was that stupid woman!" The hitman wheezes through his laughter. "She charged out like a maniac, shoved your sister away, and took every single one of my bullets straight to her own lungs! She was just a suicidal human shield, and you actually thought she was working for us?!"

The gun clatters against the concrete floor, firing off a round that ricochets off the wall.

Vittorio stays frozen in his shooting stance, completely paralyzed, as if struck by lightning.

"Impossible." Lorenzo loses all color in his face. He steps forward. "You are lying! When we ran in, she was the one holding the gun!"

"That is because I ran dry and she grabbed my weapon!" Mockery fills the hitman's eyes. "The big bad Mafia Don, executing the only person willing to take a bullet for your family! Vittorio, I will see you in hell!"

Vittorio stumbles back a step.

Do you hear the truth now, Vittorio?

I rush up to his face and scream. While you were down here torturing people, I was freezing to death in a sub-zero hell!

Just then, Lorenzo's phone starts buzzing like crazy.

"Boss, it is the docks." Lorenzo answers it, his face instantly draining of color.

"Speak!" Vittorio snatches the phone, his voice cracking.

"Boss... the cooling pipes on smuggler's freezer number three just burst." The dockworker sounds terrified. "Ice water is leaking out from under the doors... It is red. It is all blood."

"Get the car! Go get the fucking car right now!"

Vittorio shoves Lorenzo aside and sprints out of the basement.

The roar of the engine tears through the night.

Vittorio grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn dead white.

"Evelyn... hold on... please hold on..."

I sit in the passenger seat, staring coldly at his agonizing breakdown.

It is too late, Vittorio. When you yanked out that heart monitor wire, I took my very last breath. All you are going to see now is the nightmare you built with your own hands.

The car barely comes to a stop before Vittorio kicks the door open and tumbles out. He stumbles toward freezer number three, his expensive suit getting covered in dock mud.

The freezer is already surrounded by dark red slush.

"Get it open! Cut it open right now!" Vittorio roars.

The heavy lock snaps. A wave of freezing white fog and the heavy stench of blood rushes out instantly.

Vittorio freezes in place, unable to take a single step forward.

The fog clears.

Deep inside the freezer, a curled-up body is locked solid within a thick block of ice.

My skin is a horrifying bruised purple. The white silk nightgown I wear is stained dark red with blood, frozen solid like a suit of armor.

The nails on all ten of my fingers are peeled off completely. My bloody, mangled fingertips are frozen absolutely solid to the steel wall.

Trailing down from my fingertips, the wall is covered in dense, horrifying bloody scratches. That is the pure desperation I clawed out with my last ounce of strength while suffocating in the extreme cold.

Right in the center of those scratches, a single sentence written in blood burns everyone's eyes.

I kept my vow.

Vittorio drops heavily to his knees on the ice. He shakes violently all over, unable to force a single complete syllable out of his throat.

He reaches out a trembling hand, trying to touch my pale, frosted cheek.

Don't touch me! I scream, trying to block his hand.

But he does not hear me.

His fingers cover my face as he tries to pull me out of the ice.

A sickening, muffled tear echoes loud in the silence.

The frozen flesh forcefully rips away from the ice. Half of my cheek tears completely off, exposing bare white bone.

"Argh!"

Vittorio yanks his hand back like he touched a live wire. He stares at the icy, bloody flesh in his hands and completely loses his mind.

"Evelyn!"

A scream cuts through from the back of the crowd.

Isabella runs barefoot into the freezer. When she sees the unrecognizable corpse in the ice, she drops straight to her knees in the bloody water.

"You killed her..." Isabella grips her hair tightly, tears pouring down her face. "You killed the only person willing to take a bullet for us! You are an animal! You are a fucking animal!"

"No... I didn't... Evelyn, wake up, hit me..."

The mafia boss who runs the East Coast underworld now kneels next to my body. He buries his face in the bloody ice shards on the floor and lets out a broken, gut-wrenching howl like a wounded animal.