Chapter 2

I went still. I forced myself to breathe.

Two more days. I couldn't quit now.

Three years ago, Sofia had complained of a stomachache after drinking. She'd glared at me with red-rimmed eyes and demanded to know why I'd poisoned her. Before I could get a word out, Marco had pried my mouth open and poured a whole bottle of liquor down my throat.

The pain shut my body down. I collapsed in the bathroom.

No one checked on me. The whole family took Sofia to a private hospital.

As I lay dying, a mechanical voice rang out in my skull: "Host life value detected at zero. Revenge Contract forcibly bound."

"Current mission: Survive three years."

"Mission success: The suffering you endured will be returned tenfold to your enemies. You will also receive a cash reward of one hundred million US dollars."

"Mission failure: Annihilation of the soul."

Back then, I thought I was hallucinating. I didn't know what a contract was.

But when I woke up in that bathroom, my stomach no longer twisting in agony, I believed.

The contract gave me a second chance.

I was eighteen that year. I started keeping my head down. I learned to stay quiet. I learned to survive.

I recalled everything I knew about surviving in this world. I suppressed my fear. I stayed perfectly still.

The pit bull circled me, its warmth against my skin both wet and unnerving.

Outside the cage, Sofia clung to Luca's arm, all charm. "Luca, your fiancée smells so bad she's been sent to the kennel. Does that break your heart?"

Luca glanced at me with total indifference. "Don't say that. I don't have a fiancée. That engagement was torn up a long time ago."

Even now, my chest twisted.

Luca had been different from the rest of them. He was my childhood friend from the streets. When he first showed up in my neighborhood, he had a broken leg and nobody to protect him.

I stayed on that block to watch over him. He could barely move, so I stole food for him. I fought off anyone who came for him.

One winter, some thugs tried to take his crutch for firewood. I threw myself in front of him. They hung me upside down from a lamppost. They packed snowballs hard as stones and used me for target practice.

They broke my nose. Blood everywhere.

Luca held my frozen body and cried all night.

"Elena," he whispered. "When I grow up, I'll protect you."

I smiled through the haze and believed him.

Later, when the Costa family brought me home, the first thing I did was help Luca find his real family.

He turned out to be the abandoned bastard son of the Balzeri family—our enemies. They'd thrown him away on purpose.

To get him back into his family, I proposed a marriage alliance between us.

Marco called me cheap. "Back for five minutes and already chasing a man."

I knelt in the courtyard for seven days. No food. No water. My knees ground to blood and bone. At the end of it, I had a marriage contract.

It wasn't that the Costas were beneath me—it was that Don Vittorio and Donna Caterina wanted me to marry higher, to be a stepping stone for Sofia's rise.

The day we went to pick Luca up from the streets, his eyes were swollen and red. He held me so tight I could barely breathe. He swore to the heavens,"Elena, once I'm established in my family, I'll marry you!"

But he never did. He tore up our contract with his own hands.

Then he handed me to Sofia like a toy.

When did it change?

Maybe when Sofia first called him "Luca." She was prettier than me. Cleaner. Sweeter. She knew exactly how to make people love her.

She looped her arm through his and said, "Luca, your engagement to Elena—that was forced, wasn't it?"

Luca didn't deny it.

Maybe it was at some negotiation when I took a drink for him—drank until I vomited blood, collapsed on the floor, couldn't get up. Luca looked down at me and said, "Elena, you look pathetic."

I brought up marriage once. Rings. A wedding.

He got annoyed. He plucked a weed from the roadside and twined it around my finger.

Then he went to an auction, crushed every other bidder, and bought a pink diamond for Sofia. He designed the ring himself.

I asked him once, "Luca, do you still remember what you said back in the streets?"

He laughed—a laugh I'd never heard from him before. Full of mockery.

"Elena, you bring up the streets every single day. Don't you get tired of it?"

"Yes, you helped me. But you've held that over my head for years. Isn't that enough?"

Held it over him?

I'd broken my knees for him. Starved for him. Risked everything to buy him a future.

He said, "Elena, stop pretending. You only wanted this marriage because you're the least favorite daughter in your family."

"Nobody else would have you, so you latched onto me."

"You're that desperate for a man?"

Something inside me shattered.

Sofia's laugh pulled me back to the present.

"Luca, don't be so harsh. Elena was your fiancée for years."

Luca sneered. "Fiancée? A clingy beggar? She was never worthy of that word."

I took a deep breath and asked the system silently. "Does betrayal trigger the backlash too?"