Chapter 3

I came to through a haze, my head pounding.

Rust everywhere.

Rusted walls.

The smell of rust.

Rust on my tongue.

Ropes around my wrists and ankles.

I couldn’t move.

Bianca walked up and stood over me.

Arms crossed.

Looking down at me.

“Bitch. You had the nerve to slap me?”

Her voice was pure venom.

“Lorenzo broke both my legs for you. I spent months in that hospital bed thinking about exactly how I was going to grind you into dust.”

She crouched down and put her face right up against mine.

“But you know what… I should thank you.”

“You’re such a cold fish, you couldn’t even keep him satisfied in bed.”

She laughed.

“After he had me, he couldn’t stand to send me away. He hid me. Came to me every day. He’s crazy about me now.”

I stared her dead in the eye.

“If you’ve got the guts, kill me.”

She stood up and smirked.

“Kill you? No. That’d be too easy. I want you to wish you were dead.”

She stepped back and snapped her fingers.

“Boys. Work her over. Don’t stop until she can’t beg anymore.”

The first fist landed in my stomach.

I thrashed.

Somebody grabbed the back of my head and slammed my face into the concrete.

The punches came harder.

My breath got smaller and smaller.

Then two heavy slabs came down over me.

Concrete.

They actually covered me with concrete.

Dark.

Total dark.

Panic flooded in from every side and swallowed me whole.

I was eighteen again, buried under a collapsed building, my mother’s blood dripping onto my forehead.

I was right back there.

I started screaming.

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“Don’t lock me in here!”

“I can’t — I can’t breathe —”

I don’t know how long I screamed.

My throat went raw.

Then nothing came out at all.

Then — I heard him.

Lorenzo’s voice.

Somewhere above me.

I pulled every last piece of air out of my lungs.

“Lorenzo! Lorenzo, I’m here! Help me!”

But my voice was gone.

What came out was thinner than a breath.

“Baby, don’t panic. She probably got upset and went out for a drive.”

Lorenzo didn’t answer.

Then Bianca again.

“Honestly? She’s a black cloud. Look at your business since you two got engaged. Deal after deal falling apart. One after another.”

Lorenzo was quiet for a long beat.

Then, low: “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if she really is bad luck.”

Tears ran sideways off my face into the dust.

I remembered every word he had ever said to me.

He said, “Marrying you is the best thing that’ll ever happen to me.”

He said, “Bad luck? People are full of shit. You’re my lucky charm, baby.”

Now he was saying, “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder.”

He had become one of them.

He thought I was the jinx now too.

Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower started chiming.

One.

Two.

Three…

Twelve.

Past midnight.

It was my birthday.

Outside, fireworks exploded.

Big ones.

Boom after boom.

Bianca squealed.

“Lorenzo! You remembered I love fireworks!”

Lorenzo laughed.

“Little girl. Of course I remembered.”

The fireworks went on for a solid half hour.

Color after color, lighting up the whole sky.

Through the crack in the slab, I caught tiny slivers of light.

Red.

Blue.

Gold.

On, off.

On, off.

My body was going numb.

I thought about the first year I knew Lorenzo.

My parents were still alive.

He set off fireworks outside my window all night just to get me to say yes.

He stood down on the street, tilting his head back, yelling up at me —

“Aria! Just one look, baby, just look down once!”

Back then, his eyes were full of me.

Just me.

Now his fireworks were for somebody else.

Something warm ran between my legs.

I closed my eyes.

The world slid away.