And then I broke.
The tears came fast and hot, shaking their way out of me as I pressed my forehead against my knees. My hands trembled as I clenched them into fists, trying—and failing—to hold myself together.
Tomorrow was supposed to be the day everything started to get better.
Tomorrow, Harris—my fiancé—and I were meant to be married. We were supposed to talk about moving into an apartment closer to the hospital, about a life that didn’t revolve around surviving each day, about a future that felt possible.
Instead, I was unemployed.
Broke.
And still carrying the same ghosts I’d carried for ten years.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my temples and whispered into the silence only I could hear.
“I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to anymore.
The past.
Myself.
Or the life I’d never get back.
I wiped at the corners of my eyes before the tears could fall, blinking them back like a reflex.
My knee throbbed—still pulsing from the strike I had delivered—an aching reminder that some reflexes never fade, no matter how deep you bury them.
The strike had been precise, clean, and effective. But unlike my body, my mind didn’t feel so sharp. It wobbled, unsteady, weighing heavy with ten years of memories I had tried to lock away.
I had rich parents once—or so I thought.
My father had always presented himself as a legitimate businessman, a man who moved with quiet confidence and sharp suits. Real estate, shipping, a few discreet investments that made the family comfortable without ever being flashy.
I grew up in Palos Verdes, in a sprawling house overlooking the Pacific, private schools, summer trips to Europe. I believed it all came from smart deals, hard work, diligence.
Then the truth came—fraying, unraveling like cheap thread pulled too hard.
He had been one of the five most powerful mafia patriarchs in Southern California. The Vasquez name carried weight in rooms I had never been allowed to enter—cartel alliances, protection rackets, laundering through legitimate fronts. He had hidden it from me my entire life, claiming he wanted to protect my innocence.
“I didn’t want my world to touch you,” he had said, voice thick with something that might have been guilt. “I wanted you to live normal. No threats hanging over your head. No fear of federal raids. No wondering if the next knock on the door is the last.”
It sounded noble, almost reasonable, like a man apologizing while tying a rope around your wrists. But it didn’t change the reality.
He had lied to me for sixteen years. Every lesson, every rule, every protected façade—it had been a cage, gilded and sharp.
And when he died ten years ago—he left behind a final, vicious gift.
A clause in the will.
I could inherit everything—estates, offshore accounts, silent controlling shares in half a dozen companies—but only if I married the eldest son of the Thompson family before my twenty-sixth birthday. Harris Thompson.
The arrangement was decades old, a blood-oath deal between my father and old man Thompson, a merger to stabilize power, consolidate influence, and prevent war.
A merger sealed with a ring, not with love.
I hated it. Hated that it reduced me to currency. Hated that even after death, he still controlled me. That even from the grave, I had to dance on strings he had pulled years before I understood what strings were.
