The library was quiet, almost too quiet. The kind that pressed on your ears and made your thoughts louder. I sat tucked into a corner near the tall windows, the golden afternoon light bleeding across the polished floors. My fingers rested on the spine of a book I hadn't even bothered to read. I couldn't. Not after what I'd just learned. Not after what I'd just run from.
Betrayal.
That word echoed in my head like a broken record.
My father is a mafia leader.
My childhood was erased in fire and trauma.
My sister… gone.
And Jason... even he was hiding something. I knew it. I felt it in the pauses between his words, the way his jaw tightened when he thought I wasn't looking. I thought we had no more secrets between us, but I was wrong.
I'd told him I was going to the library. And now here I was, trying to hold myself together while everything I believed in fractured beneath my feet.
My phone vibrated against the wooden table. I jumped.
A message from my mother.
