The Sister They Loved, The Daughter They Lost

She glared at me with fierce intensity. Panicking, I muttered something about a sour stomach and slipped behind the door of the bathroom. What a joke. Now I was knotted into her scheme like a name on the same hit list. When her trick came apart, wouldn't I be the one dragged down into the dirt with her? Moments later, I heard my sister's sweet, practiced laugh drift down the sterile corridor: "No need to thank me. Saving a life is simply the right thing to do. The boy is only five years old. I couldn't just turn away and let him bleed." "I only lent a hand. I want nothing for it. In fact, I have other matters waiting, so I'll take my leave now." When the Don's right hand stepped forward to press a thick envelope of laundered cash into her palm, she made a hasty exit. But she made certain to leave behind a card with her name and her number, set down on the counter like a calling card for tribute. I came out of the bathroom and pressed myself into the shadowed end of the hall, weighing whether I should simply disappear before anyone noticed me. Before I could move, I caught the low, even voice of Lorenzo Moretti speaking to his right hand: "Find out whether this was an accident or whether someone planned it." "Keep the law out of it. I'll handle this myself. If a man laid hands on my son, there are a hundred ways to make him wish he hadn't." "Every soul who was at the docks when it happened, I want their names. The broken steel that ran through him, I want to know if it was loose by chance or by design. We'll see which holds up longer under pressure. The steel, or the life of whoever set it." The right hand inclined his head, again and again, in agreement. When Lorenzo's gaze settled on the card Gemma had left, I went still, bracing for whatever came next: "And this Gemma woman?" "Leave her be for now. My son comes first. I'll see to her when he opens his eyes." After Lorenzo and his crew stepped into the elevator and the doors sealed shut, I finally let out a shaky breath. The Moretti Family held this city by the throat. No one crossed them and walked away whole. Gemma had dared to spill the blood of their only heir. Her future was already written, and it was a short one. Once I left the hospital, I saw that Gemma's car was already gone. I tried calling her. No one picked up. With no other choice, I flagged down a cab and went home to the tenement. The moment I crossed the threshold, my father hurled a glass ashtray at my head. Blood began to slide down at once. My mother's voice came right behind it, clicking her tongue, dragging her eyes up and down over me before the words even fell. "Adriana, can't you show some ambition for once in your life? You're absolutely hopeless!" "Your father breaks his back on the docks for the made men year after year. Crossing paths with Don Moretti and his boy is the kind of chance that comes once and never again. If you won't help your sister, at least don't ruin it for her!" My father struck the open wound on my forehead, and I flinched, the pain white behind my eyes. "Gemma told you to clear out of that hospital. Are you deaf, or were you trying to steal the credit for saving that child? How did I ever raise something this useless?" "If Don Moretti goes looking for you, how do we finish what we started? How do we collect what's owed? You absolute fool!" So they had known all along. This was a shakedown, a blood-debt squeezed out of a Don. They didn't just know. They were behind Gemma's poison from the start. In my last life they had blamed me for wrecking her scheme, and they hadn't even bothered to claim my body off the steel. I no longer cared to keep the peace with them. "Steal the credit for saving someone? Or take the fall for her nearly killing him?" "I haven't got the stomach for either. Every part of this is rotten down to the bone." My father, enraged, raised his hand to strike me again. But Gemma, home early, stepped in. "Don't waste your breath on her. She's just a useless piece of trash, no good to anyone for anything. Lucky for us I thought ahead and left my card behind at the hospital." She laughed a half-beat too fast and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. At that, my mother's scowl melted into a beaming smile. "Gemma, you've always been the clever one. I've said it since you were small. You're meant for villas and easy money, destined for greatness!" "Not like someone else under this roof, more trouble than she's worth. A lazy mule! Twenty years of feeding her, and all she's ever been is a drain on this house!" Too tired to argue, I withdrew to my room and grabbed a fistful of tissues to press against the wound. My thumb found the inside of my left wrist and pushed hard, there at the spot where the steel had once run me through, and I did not even notice I was doing it. In the front room, Gemma was still spinning her version of the story, basking in their praise.

When I heard them rehearsing the story about the boy falling, I couldn't hold back a sneer. "Don't mistake Don Moretti for a fool just because you are one. 'Falling.' Is that the word you've settled on? Do you really think you can bury what you did under something that thin?" "Steel doesn't bend the way you need it to. You believe a bar like that just happens to snap, and just happens to find the only child in the room? Lie to the neighbors if you must. Don't insult yourselves." Their faces changed, and the Falcones came crowding into my room, agitated, the cheap floorboards groaning under them. A hand cracked hard across my face. "I always knew you were useless. From now on you keep that mouth shut. If you breathe one word that ruins your sister's arrangement, I'll break your legs myself." "You remember this. It was an accident, nothing more. Your sister pulled the Moretti boy out of harm's way out of the goodness of her heart. It's only right the Family pays us our due. And if they don't, they're the ones with no honor." I cupped my stinging cheek and let out a dry laugh. Their shamelessness turned my stomach. "So I'm useless for trying to earn an honest wage at the docks. But if I won't shake down a Don the way she does, I'm worthless." "If money has to cost me my conscience, I'd sooner starve in the gutter." My father's face went crimson. He snatched up the cracked ashtray from before and hurled it at my head again. "Honest wage? What can you do, you? If your mother and I leaned on you, we wouldn't have the cash for our own burials!" "Bad enough you're worthless, and now you've got the nerve to run your mouth about your sister? Look at yourself. What have you ever amounted to? Had I known, I'd have married you off for whatever dowry I could squeeze out of you." Blood from the ashtray wound slid down my face, the heat of the infection searing into my skin, but my heart felt colder than ever. "I'm your daughter, not some piece of merchandise to trade for tribute. If you despise me this much, why didn't you stop at Gemma? Why bring me into the world at all?" For one flickering moment, panic crossed both their faces. But before they could swing again, Gemma cut in, smug, twirling on her heel. "Don't waste your breath on her. She'll be poor her whole life. At the hospital she was already groveling, begging me to take her on at the front desk once I've got my own place set up. What else does a nothing like her have to offer?" She laughed a half-beat too fast and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "And did you catch the way Don Moretti looked at me today? That wasn't nothing. His wife's been in the ground for years. If he sends for me in the next few days, I just might catch his eye. And then forget a few thousand in tribute. I'll be set for life." My parents burst out laughing, nearly bent double with it. They heaped praise on Gemma, calling her the pride of the family name. But I was the only one who saw the truth. The way Lorenzo Moretti had looked at her was not admiration. It was suspicion, cold and patient, the look a man gives something he has already decided to dismantle. If Gemma was reckless enough to cross the Moretti Family, ten lives wouldn't be enough to buy her back. Blind to all of it, they kept singing her praises. They went and fetched the health tonics they'd laid in ahead of time, to help her recover from her "heroics." Not once did their eyes drift toward me. I stood there in silence, watching it play out, set on saying nothing more. My purpose was clear. I needed to cut the rope binding me to these people before it dragged me under with them. Even as my lips curled into a mocking smile, my words cut deep: "It turns my stomach, the way you look straight past the greed and the lies. Do you have any idea what you're setting yourselves up against?" As I knew it would, the mood soured in an instant. "Get out!" My father roared, the veins standing out in his neck. He grabbed the page that carried the family name, tore my name from it, and flung the scrap at me. "I won't keep a worthless daughter under this roof! Pack your things and go!" My mother joined in, clicking her tongue, raking her eyes up and down me before the disappointment settled into her face. Gemma, thumbing through her phone, didn't even glance up. With a scoff she added, "I was going to put you to work once my place is running, but seeing as you hate me so much, don't come crawling back when you've got nothing." My goal was met. Smirking, I bent and picked up the torn scrap of the family name from the floor. "One day you'll understand just how dangerous it is to meddle with the Moretti Family." "When that day comes, we'll see who ends up on their knees, begging for mercy." With that I walked out of the apartment and headed straight for the nearest pharmacy. The clerk's eyes went wide at the sight of my bloodied head. She hesitated as she handed me the medicine, her voice trembling. "Miss, you really should let a hospital see to that."

Before I could leave the pharmacy, the infection from my wound dropped me where I stood, collapsing right there on the floor. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a hospital ward. A nurse was quietly changing my dressing, never noticing I'd woken. She spoke freely with another, their voices drifting through the room without restraint. "You hear about the boy two floors down? They say he's the only grandson of the Moretti famiglia. Critical condition, and Don Moretti is out of his mind over it. Flew in specialists from across the ocean overnight just to stand at the bed." "How does a child that small end up cut up so bad? You think it's a vendetta? Somebody settling a score against the Family?" "Who knows. The Don's wife went into the ground years back, and that boy is all he's got. Whoever put a hand on him is already a dead man walking. The kid's still hanging by a thread." "Those men outside the door don't move like rent-a-cops..." "Shh. Keep your mouth shut. We don't want trouble with people like that. Those aren't guards, those are made men." When they finished and left, their words sat in my chest like cold iron. The Morettis were deeper and more dangerous than I had let myself imagine. Gemma's fate was sealed. I wasted no time arranging to sign myself out. But the moment I stepped into the hallway, I ran straight into the Don's right hand, Miles Greco. His face was drawn tight as he stopped strangers along the corridor, asking after their blood types. "The boy's wound is badly infected, and he's losing blood fast," he said. "The bank here doesn't have enough on hand." For a moment, I hesitated. Then I pressed my thumb hard against the inside of my left wrist, gritted my teeth, and stepped forward. "I can help," I said. It was the only way I knew to repay a blood debt Gemma had run up in my name. The matter was urgent, so they pushed my paperwork through without ceremony. No formalities, no record of the transfusion at all. They had me in the procedure room within minutes. Afterward I heard the boy had stabilized. Relieved, I quietly slid the needle from my arm and slipped out without leaving a single name behind me. Once I was clear of the hospital, I rented a cheap, narrow room on the edge of the city. My laborer's wages stretched only far enough for a run-down unit, and it sat, of all places, near the very docks where the accident had happened. From my window I could see the site had gone dark. Warning fences ringed the lot, and the dock men were being questioned one by one. At the center of it all stood Lorenzo Moretti himself. Terrified of being seen, I stayed shut inside that room and refused to set foot beyond the door. Gemma was the exact opposite. Every day she circled the hospital, hoping to put herself in the Don's path and convince him she was the selfless soul who had saved his son. For three days, not a single man so much as looked at her. Desperate, she forced the matter and walked into the ward under the pretense of asking after the boy. That drew the attention of the Don's people at once. Greco recognized her face, and when the boy spoke of an "older sister" who had been kind to him in the worst of it, they took her for that sister. Grateful, Greco gave his word that Don Moretti would call on Gemma in person once the boy was out of danger. Gemma had been waiting for exactly that. She'd had someone film the whole exchange in secret and put the footage out for the neighborhood to see. By the next day, the story of "Gemma's brave act to save the only Moretti heir" had run through the tenements like fire down a fuse. Overnight, she went from a nobody to a whispered legend. People hungry for any thread to the Moretti name crowded into our place, heaping praise and thanks on her. They said she hadn't only saved a boy. She'd saved an entire famiglia. They called Gemma the kindest soul the city had ever bred, and tributes of every kind began arriving at our door in her honor. In the middle of the frenzy, Gemma made her own statement, dripping with righteousness. "I didn't do it expecting anything back," she said. When the question pressed her, she laughed a half-beat too quick and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Even if it had been some ordinary family's child, I'd have done the same. Who could stand by at a moment like that?" Her words set the picture in stone, the warm-hearted heroine, and the whole neighborhood ate it whole. Meanwhile, I was sick with fear. Dreading the storm Gemma's lies were about to call down, I had my name struck from the family name that very night, renounced before witnesses, gone. When I went back to collect my things, I found Frank and Carol basking in their borrowed glory. Their pride was so thick they all but floated with every step across the floor.

The two of them held up their phones, scrolling through the messages flooding in, laughing endlessly. It was as if they could already see themselves welcomed through the gates of the Moretti Estate as the saviors of the Family. I stayed quiet, ignoring their smugness, and focused on heading back to my room to pack my belongings. My mother clicked her tongue and looked me up and down, sneering with disdain. "You really don't know how to enjoy life, do you? You're just destined to break your back at the docks. A money-loser through and through!" My father sighed dramatically, shaking his head and wiping his palms down the front of his trousers. "If only you were half as useful as your sister, I wouldn't still be hauling crates down at the warehouse for men who wouldn't spit on me." Gemma strutted over with her phone, waving the screen in front of me like a trophy. "You're so clueless, aren't you? Don Moretti himself has already reached out to me. He wants to meet." Her voice dripped with smugness as she continued, "He knows all about what I did for his boy. He even sent over a whole tribute box of fine things. You couldn't afford a single one of them if you worked every miserable day of your life." She leaned in closer, her tone oozing mockery. "There's still time to get on my good side. You are my sister, after all. Once the tribute comes in, maybe I'll toss you twenty thousand out of pity." Her words made my stomach churn, and I couldn't hold back. "Have you lost your mind?" I said sharply. "The Don's son has been wounded for days, and you've been the one whispering that story through the whole neighborhood. You think a man like Lorenzo Moretti just hands over cash? You're practically signing your own death warrant." No sooner had I said this than my mother gasped loudly. She had just spotted something new on her screen, a statement put out under the Moretti name. The word had gone out, clean and absolute. The Don's son had been abroad the whole time, untouched, never harmed. The story crawling through the tenement was branded a lie, and those who repeated it would answer for it. Within moments, the comment sections that had been so alive fell silent, and every post about Gemma vanished as if a hand had simply wiped them away. Gemma's face drained of color, and she froze. My parents, too, began pacing frantically around the room. Then, just as panic took hold, Gemma's phone pinged. A message had come in under Lorenzo Moretti's name. "I'll send my men for you. Be downstairs in five minutes." At once, her nervous expression melted away, replaced by a triumphant smirk. She laughed a half-beat too quickly and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then waved her phone in my face. "See? The Moretti Family isn't going to make a spectacle out of this. Men of that rank keep things quiet, everyone knows that. But they still came to me right away. The tribute's probably already on its way." Her voice turned cutting. "You're so spineless, you'll never amount to anything. You're not even fit to carry my shoes. Get lost." She shoved me aside and strutted into her bedroom to change. Meanwhile, my parents turned their frustration on me. "You're useless!" my father barked, wiping his palms down his trousers again. "You don't have your sister's gifts, but you're quick to tear her down. Why did we even bother taking you in?" "If you want to leave, then leave!" My mother snapped, her voice rising. "All you do is get in the way!" Her eyes glistened with greed as she added, "This is our chance. We made the right gamble. Who knows, maybe we'll be sleeping in an estate above our station by tonight." My father, already lost in the fantasy, pulled out his phone and began scrolling through luxury cars. He called a dealer and put money down on a Maybach on the spot. My mother, not to be outdone, dug out a dress she'd hidden away for years, painted her face flawless, and started planning where she'd spend the first of the laundered cash. Seeing their unbridled excitement, I quietly returned to my room to finish packing. As I stepped outside with my belongings, I was met by a crowd of neighbors who had gathered after hearing the noise. Envious voices filled the air. "Your daughter is a real blessing. I saw it spreading online, it's the Moretti Family. You'll never want for tribute again." "Don't forget about us when you're living behind those walls." "If I'd known a thing like this could happen, I'd have sent my husband down to work the Moretti docks. This is like winning a place in the Family overnight. I heard the steps inside Don Moretti's estate are laid in real gold." My parents basked in the attention, grinning from ear to ear. They eagerly promised everyone that once Gemma had the Don's favor, they'd see their neighbors looked after too. Amid their laughter and chatter, a long black car rolled to a stop outside. Five men stepped out, broad and unhurried, their faces cold and their eyes already counting exits. The street went quiet around them. "Which one of you is Gemma?" one of them said, his voice flat and even. He let his gaze move once across the gathered crowd, and the boasting died on every tongue. "Come with us, down to the warehouse. The Don wants to see you."