Poison

Poison

“It wasn’t just your mother they wanted dead. It was what she carried.”

They always said I looked like her.

The same sharp chin. The same storm-colored eyes. The same way of walking into a room like I already knew the truth and dared someone to lie to me.

But I wasn’t her.

Not yet.

She moved with grace and calculation. I moved like a girl still learning how not to flinch.

It started with a box.

Not one tucked away in a vault or hidden beneath a floorboard. No, this one sat in plain sight — right behind the old De Luca library wall, where sunlight couldn’t reach and secrets were safe beneath dust and silence.

Fiora had found it first.

“There’s something here,” she said, kneeling beside the broken shelf. Her voice was quieter than usual. Careful. Like she already knew this was something dangerous.

The folder inside wasn’t labeled. Just bound in old twine, the pages yellowing at the edges. But the moment I opened it, I knew it was hers.

My mother’s handwriting danced across the pages in ink that bled through thin paper.

Medical terms. Chemical symbols. Gene sequencing charts. Notes about blood anomalies within old De Luca descendants. A single, underlined phrase:
“Her blood is the key. If it activates, they’ll kill her, too.”
I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until Fiora gently took the file from me.

“What is this?” I asked. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded like a child. Hollow. Small.

Fiora flipped a page. “Your mother wasn’t just trying to leave the family. She was trying to expose it.”

I blinked. “Expose what?”

She hesitated.

“Power,” she said finally. “Old bloodline power. Genetic. Inherited. Your mother was born with it. She suspected you were, too.”

I stood there, unmoving, the words clawing at the inside of my skull.

“You’re telling me she died… because of me?”

“No,” Fiora said quickly. “She died because of him. Vittorio knew. He’s known for years. This isn’t about loyalty. This is about control.”

It hit me like a car crash — all at once and slow enough to feel every inch of it.

My father hadn’t just let her die.

He planned it.

Because whatever was in my blood scared him more than the war outside.

I staggered back from the shelf, gripping the wall like it might keep me standing.

“Aria,” Fiora said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We have to move carefully. If he even suspects you know—”

“I don’t care,” I said. “He killed my mother. He lied to my face. And now… now I’m next.”

It wasn’t a question anymore.

It was a fact.

He’d already begun.

The subtle poisoning in my tea that Luna found and threw out “just in case.” The security protocols tightening without explanation. The way Rafa hovered more, always smiling, always watching.

Even Dante’s sudden “proposal” made sense now. He didn’t want a wife. He wanted a leash.

They weren’t just trying to control me.

They were preparing to erase me.

I stared down at the file in Fiora’s hands. My mother’s notes. Her theories. Her warnings.
“If it activates…”
Whatever it was — whatever I was — they were afraid of it.

And maybe they should be.

Because I was done grieving.

Done begging.

Done pretending I didn’t know what they were capable of.

I wasn’t a daughter anymore.

I was a weapon forged by love and betrayal.

And for the first time, I understood why my mother smiled the day she died.

Because she’d passed the curse on to me.

And I intended to use it.

Luna stood in the doorway like she’d been waiting for the right moment to break.

She didn’t speak at first. Just looked at me, then at the file in my hand. Her face shifted — not in surprise, not fear. Something sadder. Something closer to surrender.

“I knew you’d find it,” she said quietly.

I sat on the edge of the old leather armchair, eyes still on the papers. “You knew my mother was researching the bloodline?”

“No,” she said. “But I knew she was being watched for something. My father told me before they took him.”

I looked up sharply.

“Wait. I thought he died of—”

“An aneurysm,” she finished, nodding bitterly. “That’s what they said. But it wasn’t. Vittorio ordered a purge. A cleansing. All the old men who might’ve stayed loyal to her were removed. Silently. Without fuss. My father was one of them.”

The air around us felt tighter. Like even the walls were holding their breath.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to lose you too.”

Her voice cracked. And I saw it, the thing she’d been carrying all this time. Guilt. Fear. Love, twisted and heavy.

She stepped forward. “We have to leave, Aria. This place—it’s cursed.”

I didn’t answer. My hands were already trembling.

I went straight to Silas.

He was sharpening a blade by the window, motionless, calm like always. But when he saw my face, he stood without a word.

I handed him the folder.

He didn’t ask questions. He never did. He just read. Quiet. Careful.

When he looked up, something in his eyes had shifted. Less shadow. More fire.

“I need you to listen to me,” I said, heart pounding. “We can’t stay. We run tonight. Or we burn this family down and never look back.”

Silas didn’t hesitate.

“Then we run,” he said.

Just like that.

But fate, as always, had other plans.

The door opened before we even packed a single thing.

Rafa.

Of course it was Rafa.

He stepped inside like he lived here. Calm, collected, something smug buried beneath the warmth in his eyes. I saw the glint of a holstered weapon under his coat. His hand rested near it, lazy but not careless.

“You’re planning something,” he said softly. “That’s disappointing.”

I stood my ground. “Get out.”

Rafa’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You know, I almost kissed you once, when we were thirteen. Right before your mother caught us and told me I wasn’t allowed to dream above my station.”

Silas moved slightly, silent and slow, blocking me from Rafa’s line of sight.

“I’m not here for nostalgia,” Rafa added, voice hardening. “I’m here because someone told me you were about to make a very stupid choice.”

“Who told you?” I demanded.

He looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Your father.”

I saw red. I stepped forward, fists clenched, but Silas pulled me back.

Rafa sighed. “You think he won’t kill you? He’s counting on you to do something reckless.”

“And what are you, Rafa?” I asked. “His lapdog?”

“I’m alive,” he said flatly. “And so are you. For now. But keep this up, and that won’t last.”

He turned to leave, but paused at the door. “If you try to disappear tonight, you won’t make it out of the city.”

He didn’t say they were watching.

He said he was.

When the door shut behind him, the silence felt like a warning.

Silas didn’t speak. Just walked to the drawer, pulled out a map, and unfolded it on the table.

watched him, my throat dry. “You still want to run?”

He met my gaze. His voice was steel.

“No. We don’t run anymore.”

——-

The wind outside had died, but inside me, it raged.

I didn’t even flinch when the door opened again.

Rafa stood there.

Alone. No guards. No threats. Just him — with that same unshakable calm he wore like a mask since we were children.

I reached for the gun on the table.

“I wouldn’t,” he said gently.

“Then get out.”

“I can’t.”

He stepped inside. Closed the door behind him.

Silas stood like stone, unmoving, unreadable, his hand still resting on the back of the chair between us. His blade was half-sheathed. Waiting.

“I need to talk to her,” Rafa said, his voice low. “Alone.”

Silas didn’t budge.

But I did. I raised a hand.

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t. But I needed answers.

He waited until Silas disappeared into the hallway — not far, but far enough — before speaking.

Rafa looked at me like someone looking at a place they used to live.

“I loved you, you know.”

The words hit me like a slap, unexpected and late.

He kept going, voice hollow. “Maybe not in the way you wanted. But I did. You were my light in that house. You were everything good that survived in it.”

I didn’t answer.

“And you chose him,” he whispered. “You chose the killer. The knife in the dark. The man who would rather burn down your world than live in it.”

“You don’t get to talk about him,” I said, quietly seething.

“I planted the bomb.”

The words didn’t register at first. They didn’t fit in the silence.

“What?”

He met my eyes. No flinching. No shame.

“I planted the bomb at your mother’s grave.”

The floor vanished beneath me.

“You… what?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” he said, almost too fast. “None of you were. It was a warning. For Silas. For you. To stop digging.”

“You could’ve killed me.”

“I almost did,” he snapped — then softened, the anger folding in on itself. “But you didn’t die. You never do. You survive everything, Aria. That’s your curse.”

I staggered back, every nerve on fire. “You tried to kill me. And you’re standing here talking about love?”

“I broke the day you looked at him like he was the only one who ever mattered,” he said, trembling. “And I realized I never had a place in your world. Not really. Not next to him.”

“You’re right,” I said, voice shaking. “You don’t. Not anymore.”

He blinked, and for a moment, I saw something crack in him. But it was too late.

“You should’ve just stayed the boy who shared secrets with me in the vineyard,” I whispered. “But now, all I see when I look at you… is the man who tried to put me in the ground.”

I raised the gun slowly — not to shoot, not yet. Just to remind him I could.

“Get out.”

He backed away. No argument. No apology.

Just a final look — the ghost of something that used to be human — before he disappeared into the dark.

When Silas stepped back into the room, I didn’t speak.

I just collapsed against his chest and let the truth crush me.

Because this wasn’t just betrayal.

This was war.

And it had always started with love.