ANTONIO PRACTICALLY SHOVES ME into a car when he spots his father getting out. I hide in the backseat, the window cracked open half an inch so that I can overhear their conversation.

"Noon, on the dot, as promised," Roberto says calmly, gesturing with his arms wide. His thick Italian accent coats his brusque words. "Though I didn't require your information, I still made it. I know who the informant is."

"You do, now?" Antonio stuffs his hands in the pocket as though he isn't given informed critical information from his gangster father and instead engaged in a calm conversation with someone in the checkout line at the grocery store. Though I could never really picture him in the grocery store, buying produce. "Then please enlighten me. Who is it?"

"That girl," he says. And I hear all the restraint in his voice to keep from calling me something much worse. I don't blame him. "Christina Martell. Where is she?"

"Why do you need to know?" he says.

Is this why he brought me out? He was going to let his father kill me? I burrow deeper into the backseat, afraid even to breathe. Tears spring to my still-raw eyes and I wipe them away, angry at my own cowardice.

"Why do you think?" roberto Cavalli says. "We have omerta for a reason. Anyone who breaks it faces a fate worth than death."

"She never took that oath of silence," Antonio says. "She's not one of us."

His words, she's not one of us, sound both filled with resentment and adoration. I do not deserve either.

Not from him.

The door open, the engine revs and I jump, clapping my hand over my mouth and trying not to scream. Then the driver turns around, their blue eyes locking on mine. It's Allie. She places a finger to her lips, like, don't speak. I couldn't even if I wanted to, my vocal cords seeming to have constricted completely.

"No, but you wanted her to be, didn't you?" Roberto say slsowly.

What?

"You bought a ring." Roberto Cavalli continues, his black suit standing out against his white car and the grey gravel underneath his feet, crunching like the snapping of his enemies' necks. Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. But every noise to me sounds like a ready peril, lethal and deadly and immediate. "You wanted to marry that girl and make her a Cavalli."

Antonio says nothing. Through the crack in the window, I see his face, full of nothing but the most sorrowful anguish.

Something inside of me, something traitorous and foolish enough to not know that Antonio Cavalli is bad for me, not just bad but the worst, not just bad for me but bad in general... that part of me crumbles. I want to fling my arms around him. At that moment, that part of me would say yes to anything as long as he was the one doing the asking.

But I can't. Not if I want to make it out of here alive.

The tires crunch on the gravel. Allie rolls down the driver's side window. "Bye, Papa!"

He frowns. "Where are you going?"

"Shopping," she says. Too quickly. For a mafia princess, I thought she would be a better liar. I guess not.

"Where?"

"Hobby Lobby."

"You never go there."

"They're having a sale."

"They're also closed on Sundays. And last time I checked, Adelina, today was a Sunday. So tell me, where are you going and why are you driving your own car?"

Allie's hands move quickly over the gears and buttons, but in her haste, she hits the button to roll down the tinted backseat window.

Revealing one, Christina Martell. Me.

"Harbouring a fugitive?" His face doesn't change as he glances from his daughter to me and back to Allie. But something deepens in his voice, opening to new and darker pits of wickedness. "This isn't how I raised you."

"No," she says coolly. "But I learned from you that some things are more important than the laws."

"Things like what?" He jerks the car door open and I barely escape tumbling to the ground, scooting back to the back of the seat. Should I run? Hide? How? Where?

"Family," she says. "And love."

Roberto scoffs. "You don't love this girl."

"No," she says. "But my brother does."

Just as I put my hand on the handle of the car door, Roberto Cavalli reaches in in one fell swoop and drags me out of the car kicking and screaming, pressing a gun to my temple.

My insides tense up, feeling the cold metal against my forehead.

I watch Antonio, my eyes never leaving him as his father's forearm bends against my throat, cutting off my air supply. Even when black spots dance in my vision, I need to know if it's true.

I need to know if he really wanted to marry me. If I was really the one for him, and we just caught each other in the wrong lives, at the back time.

I need to know if we could have stood a chance. If we ever had a fighting chance, before I dive-bombed all over it by working with my ex-boyfriend. Please, my eyes say to his grey ones.

Please, tell me if any of this was real.

His eyes tell me everything I need to know. Pain, panic, and fear lie in them. Betrayal, and hurt, too. But most importantly, an emotion I know all too well: grief.

Not grief for what he's lost. Grief for what we will never have.

"Take your hands off of her," Antonio says, slowly walking over to his father. "Damn it, Dad, drop the girl! She didn't do crap to you!"

"She's the one informing on us to the feds," Roberto says calmly. I feel his hand tighten around my neck, the gun pressing harder against my face, digging into my skin. Tears spring into my eyes again, and I try to glare through them.

"You're too blinded by your own lust for a pretty face to see the truth, Antonio. That she betrayed us. You would never have cared about some woman before this, Tony. Don't do this now. Don't let this woman ruin you, now."

Antonio doesn't let me go. He doesn't walk away. Instead, he pulls out his gun, and, in one fell shot, shoots his father in the arm.

The holler of pain and spray of blood is too near me for my comfort. I dive away from Roberto as he releases me, trying to make it behind the car, back into the car and secure myself behind the door. I slam it shut, squishing Roberto Cavallii's fingers, and lock the doors, getting on the floor.

"You shot me," Roberto says slowly. "You shot your own father."

Antonio's face in the crack in the window is stern, unyielding. "And I would do it again if you threatened her life."

The car window smashes and I scream as broken glass rains over me, veiling my hair and landing on my clothes like deadly snowflakes.

Roberto Cavalli yanks me up by the collar. "You're not going to stop me, son. You're too weak. You will never be able to turn against your family. You'd never break your word."

"I would," Antonio shouts. And with that, his next bullet lands in his father's chest. I fall back to the floor of the car, then open the door with shaky, bleeding hands, and stare down at Roberto Cavalli's corpse. Covered in broken glass and blood, I watch Antonio run toward me. Frozen in time, I feel like I can't move. I'm rooted to the ground, unable to leave this spot. No one and nothing can release me from this palace, from this second of my life. I am numb. I am hollow. I am nothing.

Then Antonio's hands touch mine, and I come to life again. He brushes the broken glass from my hair with tender hands, and dabs at the blood on my face - his father's blood on my cheek - with a silk handkerchief. "Christina," he says. "Christina, look at me. Are you okay?"

I open my mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. I close it again, but not a thought floats in my head. I say the first thing that my instincts push me to say. "Did you mean it?"

"What?" He pauses in wiping the blood from my eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Did he mean it when he said that you wanted to marry me?" I say softly, my voice barely above a croak.

"Christina..." His thumb brushes over my cheekbone, under my eyes. "I just killed my father for you."

"Why?" I say, and I feel like I'm about to break. I can't help but think that I survived death just to fall into it once more.

"Because I love you," he says angrily. "Because I love you no matter all that you've done, all that you've said, and I can't stop loving you. I want to keep you in my life because I don't know... because I do know how my life looked without you in it, and it was the darkest thing I've ever seen. You came into my life, Christina, and you woke me up. I don't want to be without you. Will you marry me?"

I freeze. He reads the hesitation in my eyes.

"Come on Christina." He seizes one of my hands in his. "Come with me to Cuba."

Cuba. It's a country without extradition to the U.S. Meaning, he'll never be caught. We'll never be caught.

Every fibre of my heart says to go with him, to agree, to give in.

Every ounce of my mind and spirit know better than to say yes.

"Antonio," I say softly. "Do you know what happens in the middle of Jane Eyre?"

He looks befuddled. "We don't have time for this, sweetheart--"

"Let me finish." I hold up a hand. "In the middle of Jane Eyre, Jane has just found out about Rochester's first wife, Bertha. Rochester asks Jane to be his mistress and to go with him and live in France together. She loves this man! He's lifted her out of obscure poverty. Yet she refuses him. Do you know why?"

"Why, because she couldn't get over the first wife in the attic?" A wry smile. He's playing along, not knowing where this will lead. Or maybe knowing how it will end, but going down this path anyway.

"Because she loved God more than him, and she was willing to give her heart to God, trusting that He would make their plans fall into place," I say. A tear slides down my cheek, a sob rising in my throat, meeting in the middle. "This... your life of crime... That's your first wife in the attic, that's your Bertha. I don't want to be your mistress, Antonio. It would break me, even more than it would hurt to leave you."

"You're not Jane Eyre and I'm not Rochester," he says, his expression tender. "Christina, please."

"I'm sorry, Antonio." I drop my remaining hand from his. "I can't be your wife."