Chapter 6 

My cheeks were sunken. My skin-gray, waxy. A long, angry scar slashed across my abdomen, aint but cruel. And my hair… it was gone. Buzzed down to the scalp, patches still uneven. 

looked like a ghost someone forgot to bury. 

didn’t cry. I wanted to. My throat stung. My eyes burned. But no tears came. 

Just this cold, bitter silence inside me. 

The next few months were the ugliest kind of healing. I had to learn how to speak again. My oice was hoarse for weeks. Every sentence came out as a rasp at first, like sandpaper across 

one. 

Water,” I’d croak. 

othario would jump up, bring the cup before I finished the word. “I got you,” he’d say every time. 

They tried to teach me how to sit up on my own. Then how to crawl. Then how to stand. 

am made a joke once that I was like a baby deer, all wobbly limbs and big eyes. I told him if ver walked again, I’d kick his teeth in. 

Spunky,” he smirked. “That’s good. Keep that fire.” 

hree years. 

That’s how long it took before I looked in the mirror and didn’t flinch. My face now was new. Three long years of hell. Lothario and Sam kept me off the grid. No social. No phones. No 

vindows. 

Every day, I got a little stronger. By the second year, I could walk with a cane. By the third, I didn’ leed it anymore. 

wasn’t the girl they left in that hospital bed anymore. 

was steel. Sharp edges and quieter rage. 

Lothario trained me himself. Taught me how to shoot, how to break bones, how to disappear in a crowd. 

shaved my head clean on purpose this time, 

‘I’m not hiding what they did to me,” I said, staring at my reflection. “Let them see.” 

We trained in the dead of night. Fists, knives, guns, shadows. Lothario never held back. Neither 

did I. 

He taught me how to modulate my voice. Change it. Fake accents. Walk like someone else. Talk 

like someone else. 

“You don’t get to be Ivanna anymore,” he said. “Not until it’s safe.” 

“And when will it be safe?” I asked. 

Sam answered from the corner of the room. He was loading supplies into a go-bag, voice tired 

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but serious. 

“It won’t be. Not for a while. Maybe not ever. They still think you’re dead, Ivanna. If you resurface now, you won’t last a day.” 

I smiled at him. Cold. Crooked. Familiar. 

“I don’t want to resurface.” 

I leaned forward, tied my boots tight, and slipped a blade into the side of 

“I want to haunt them.” 

my boot. 

Some people build houses. Some build careers. 

built ghosts. 

had six new identities by the end of that summer. Seven, if you count the one I used just to 

watch the world burn from the sidelines. 

Different names. Different looks. Different lives. 

One of them was a redhead with freckles and a Russian passport. Another was a French fashior buyer who spoke five languages and didn’t exist. I even created an old woman-limp, gray hail glasses-and slipped into that skin like it belonged to me. 

.othario called it overkill. 

called it insurance. 

You’re building a whole army of yourself,” he muttered once, watching me digitally erase on nore version of Ivanna Rossi from a police archive. 

didn’t look up. “No. I’m building options.” 

He exhaled slow. “You always were smarter than all of them.” 

Lothario kept me updated. 

We’d sit in the backroom of that crumbling underground chapel, the light flickering overhead while he went through everything I missed. 

t was like reading the obituary of a life I didn’t remember dying in. 

‘Marian and Rupert took over the east docks,” he said one night, sliding a map across the table. ‘Shipping lanes, storage warehouses, bribed half the harbor guards. That’s how they launder 

now.” 

I traced the red circles he’d marked. “That used to be ours.” 

He nodded. “Not anymore.” 

He was gentler when he told me the next part. 

“Matteo’s not just a capo anymore. He made regional Don. Controls everything from Jersey to northern Virginia.” 

I didn’t flinch. I just filed it away. 

“And Chris?” I asked. 

Chante-G 

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12:00 am Pppp. 

Lothario hesitated. “Engaged,” he finally said. “To the De Luca girl. Old money. They’re mergin the families.” 

I closed my eyes for a moment. Not to cry. I didn’t have that in me anymore. I was jus memorizing it. The betrayal. The chessboard. 

Then he said, “You should see this.” 

And dropped a file folder in my lap. 

Clippings. Dozens of them. Articles from every major outlet. 

Rossi Heiress Dies In Tragic Accident 

Closed-Casket Funeral Held For Ivanna Rossi 

Father Breaks Down In Tears At Daughter’s Wake 

One photo showed my father clutching Marian’s hand like she was the one buried in the grounc Another showed Chris looking solemn and heroic beside a coffin that didn’t hold a single piec of me. But the one that broke something permanent in me? 

The one where Marian wore black lace and pearls, dabbing fake tears with a silk handkerchief- vearing my mother’s brooch like she’d earned it. 

The caption read: 

Grief-stricken sister speaks: ‘She’ll always be with us.” 

W 

Lothario watched me read every page, his jaw tight. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t scream. I didn’ hrow anything. I just sat there, absorbing it all like poison through skin. 

He said, “You okay?” 

answered quietly, “I’m done crying.” 

.ater that night, I sat in front of the mirror again. 

My latest disguise was peeled off-no contacts, no wig, no layers. Just me. Raw. Scarred Buzzed hair growing back in uneven patches. 

But my eyes? 

My eyes were the only thing Marian couldn’t steal. 

stared at myself, jaw set. They thought they buried me. They thought I’d stay gone. 

But I didn’t die. I shed. 

leaned closer to the mirror. My voice was low, but every word landed like a bullet. 

‘Ivanna Rossi is dead. But I’m not.” 

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