Dying Unloved: My Cold Family's Bitter Regret

SerafinaPOV

The pain stopped.

Not faded. Not dulled. Stopped. Like a door slamming shut.

I opened my eyes.

I was looking down at a room from somewhere near the ceiling. White lights hummed overhead. Stainless steel gleamed on every surface. Men in scrubs moved below me with brisk, practiced efficiency.

I knew this place. The Rossi family's underground clinic, buried three stories beneath the estate. I'd been stitched up here more times than I could count—broken bones, allergic reactions, the occasional knife wound from a rival crew's hazing ritual. Usually without anesthesia.

Pain builds character, my father always said.

I tried to take a breath. My lungs didn't move.

I tried to feel my heartbeat. There was nothing.

I was dead.

The realization didn't hit me all at once. It crept in at the edges, cold and quiet, filling the spaces where fear should have been.

I'm dead.

Dante killed me.

No one came.

I didn't panic. I didn't scream. There was no adrenaline left to fuel it—no body to produce the chemicals that would have made me fight or flee. Just a vast, hollow stillness where my physical self used to be.

And underneath that stillness, something else. Something I hadn't expected.

Frustration.

It rose up from whatever was left of me—a desperate, clawing need to move, to speak, to reach down and shake the people below me until they understood. I was right here. I was right above them. And I couldn't do a single thing.

I drifted downward, pulled by an invisible current. The closer I got to my father, the stronger the pull became, like he was a gravity well and I was a dead satellite falling into orbit.

Vincenzo Rossi stood by the main operating table, dressed in a dark suit, his face a mask of stone. He was in his late fifties, but he looked older tonight. The lines around his mouth were deeper. The grey at his temples had spread.

I hovered inches from his shoulder. I tried to touch him. My hand passed through his arm like smoke through air.

Dad.

He didn't turn around. Didn't flinch. Didn't feel a thing.

Dad, I'm right here. Please. Look at me.

The double doors swung open. Capo Rossi burst through, drenched from head to toe, rainwater streaming from the hem of his coat.

"We found them in an alley deep in Moretti territory," he said. "Three body bags. Untouched by the rain. Whoever left them wanted them found."

He stepped closer to my father, lowering his voice. "The dismemberment is Dante's signature. You know what this blood feud means."

Rossi grabbed my father's arm. "You need to double the guards on Carmela and Serafina. Dante is hunting your bloodline—"

My father's forearm went rigid. He pulled his sleeve free with a single, violent motion.

"My traitorous daughter should have died a long time ago."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I knew my father didn't love me. I'd known it for eight years. But hearing him say it—hearing him wish me dead while my skinless body lay in bags three feet away from him—

Dad. Dad, I'm in there. I'm right there. Please.

Rossi froze. The medics dropped their eyes to the floor.

I kept trying. I threw everything I had at him—every ounce of will, every shred of whatever energy a ghost was made of. I screamed into his ear until the effort tore through me like fire.

He didn't hear me.

My father snapped on a pair of surgical gloves.

He reached for the zipper of the first body bag.

And pulled it down.

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