Escaping The Mafia Don's Golden Cage

per

ressive silence of the Stark mansion, and my audienc

ly when Eli spoke. I avoided eye contact with Cody whenever he entered the ro

shadows, I

i liked to forget that. He liked to think of me as a trophy-p

had coded myself during the long, sleepless nights. I wasn't looking fo

eon who had been blacklisted for unethical experiments, now operating out of a hidden clinic

a message

: A cle

ledger codes. I need

ame three h

old shipyar

rver onto a micro-drive. Names, dates, bribes. Enough to send him to prison fo

he escape, I s

going to be with him. It was the perfect narrative. The grieving mother, u

ext to the note. I had hacked the signal to loo

the servants' entran

n't caref

y. The headlights flared on, blinding

e passenger side. Florenc

ey asked, a gun hangin

didn't want him to bring me

to help you with your 'suicide', Harper.

dge of town. The river below was swollen and raging

The wind whipped my hair acr

he wind. "You're miserable. Eli is tired of

dy despite the terror clawing at my

" Florence called from t

the last thing I saw

to Leo

fe

instantly, driving the breath from my lungs. I tumbled in

the water. I wasn't going to d

to it, gasping for air as the river swept me downs

ank miles away. I was fr

eline. A man in a dark coat.

ate," a v

for the meeting; he had been tracking the

hands were warm, precise. He didn't look li

attered, my teeth clackin

fted me into his arms effortle

e took me to a basement clinic that smelled of antisep

nd him was a machine that looked like som

strange sadness. "The procedure... it's irreversible. You won't remember th

. Then I saw Cody smashing the sno

. "My son is dead. And the woman

. "Take it all aw

. He placed a ma

ackward

," I

ed. Blue light f

in

my chest b

ig

lurred into

ev

dissolved o

ix

for the first time in years, the s