Chapter 2

Before leaving Chicago, I wanted to give back the things I'd been holding for them.

I started with Adrian's boxing medal.

He'd won it at twelve and given it to me to keep afterward. He'd said I'd take better care of it than he would. All these years, it had stayed in the back of my desk.

I went looking for him at the private hospital his family owned. He'd left to help Bianca move into an apartment near the estate, so I found him there.

Bianca pointed at a picture on the wall.

“Can you lower that one? I can't get to it.”

He took it down right away and adjusted its position.

When he saw me, he smiled. “Lexi. What brings you here?”

I offered him the medal.

“This belongs to you.”

He glanced from it to my face. “After all this time, you're giving it back?”

“I don't have a reason to keep it now.”

He appeared to hear nothing more than another protest about moving away. Dropping the medal into an unpacked box, he turned to Bianca.

“What else do you need?”

I stayed a little longer. He never asked about my departure.

Eventually, I walked out.

I found Julian downtown in the Romano family's law offices. I brought back the competition files he'd left at my place years earlier. He accepted them without lifting his head from his work.

Then he spotted the camera on my shoulder.

“You should leave the camera here, too.”

“What for?” I asked, frowning.

“Bianca's putting together a video for the family dinner. You've got years of recordings.”

I'd bought that camera for my fifteenth birthday after saving for close to a year. Its memory cards held most of our time as teenagers.

“That's my camera.”

“Of course it is. She only needs to borrow it.”

I didn't move. Julian reached for the bag.

“A few days, Lexi. That's all.”

For another moment, I held on. Then I released the strap.

“Okay.”

He visibly relaxed.

That evening, Nico met me outside the estate and gave me a portable drive.

“Put a family video together for Bianca.”

I turned the drive in my fingers. “What did you put on here?”

“Birthdays, vacations, things from before she got here. You know how to edit. Tidy it up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Anything that muddles the timeline needs to go. Footage with you, too, if you have to. Add her photos afterward.”

He sounded as if he were assigning a job to one of the guards.

I studied the little drive.

It held eighteen years of small moments. Learning to ride a bike. Camping for the first time. The boys staying awake until midnight to surprise me on my birthday.

They wanted those years without me in them, with Bianca added instead.

“Sure,” I said.

Nico looked taken aback. “You're just agreeing?”

“You asked me to handle it.”

He nodded, apparently pleased. “I thought you'd see it our way.”

Before I could explain what I did see, he was gone.

Dante took me out that night to a restaurant owned by the Romanos.

Two of his men waited outside our private dining room. We'd loved that place once. This time, he spent nearly the whole meal on his phone.

Bianca had concerns about security at the apartment.

Next, she wanted advice about the people she'd be meeting at the estate.

After that, she needed somebody to look over her car.

Dante answered her every time.

I let my dinner go cold.

“Dante.”

He looked up at last. “Yes?”

“Have you forgotten what I'm doing tomorrow?”

He considered it. “Getting ready for California?”

“Close enough.”

He looked relieved.

“It'll be fine, Lexi. I'll visit once you've gotten settled.”

He took my hand across the table and squeezed it.

“I promised you wouldn't be on your own.”

I watched him for a while.

A few weeks earlier, that reassurance would have meant the world to me.

Now I could only hear the cruelty in it.

After dinner, he pressed a kiss to my forehead.

“Wait for me, okay?”

Then he smiled. “We'll all come out when things calm down with Bianca. The five of us.”

The five of us.

He sounded so certain that I nearly wondered whether he'd forgotten it was a lie.

I let it pass.

At home, I plugged Nico's drive into my computer.

In the first folder was a recording of my tenth birthday.

Dante was fourteen, already practicing the look of a future Don. Adrian had smeared frosting on his shirt. Julian and Nico were blaming each other for the broken cake stand.

I was laughing behind the camera, making the picture shake.

I played it a second time, then opened a working copy for editing.

I highlighted every file labeled with my name.

Delete.

One after another, they vanished from the working folder.

The day I'd learned to ride my bicycle.

My first academic prize.

Our summer camping beside the lake.

The birthday when Dante had faced the camera and said he'd marry me someday.

My personal backup stayed untouched.

They could keep the past the way they wanted it.

They wouldn't have me in it.

I transferred the edited files to the drive and put it in an envelope.

That would be my final gift to them.

Before going to sleep, I checked Forever Five.

No one had been active in three months.

I looked at the names.

Dante.

Adrian.

Julian.

Nico.

Alexandra.

Another message lit up the screen.

Professor Harrison.

Transportation confirmed. Your pickup remains scheduled for tomorrow.

I went over the next sentence twice.

Upon entering the facility, you will surrender all personal devices for sealed storage. No outside personal contact will be permitted during the assignment.

Five years.

I closed his message and returned to the app.

They expected me to move to California.

They didn't understand that I was about to go somewhere none of them could reach.