The Stomachless Princess

Anya's POV

The golden poison coated the back of my throat like swallowed glass.

My chest seized. Air caught in my lungs, trapped behind the swelling that I could feel closing my airway, millimeter by millimeter.

Across the table, my father erupted from his chair with a roar. He ripped his sidearm from its shoulder holster and slammed the butt of the weapon against the polished wood-once, twice, three times-each impact rattling the silverware.

"You defy the Boss in her own house?!"

I ignored him. My eyes locked onto my mother.

"Did you-" my voice came out as a rasp, my throat already constricting "-did you boil Aurelia into the rice water?"

My mother straightened her spine. Chin lifted. Posture immaculate.

"No. I don't have time for such games."

But her eyes twitched left. Just a flicker. The tell of a liar who had never needed to learn how to lie well because no one had ever dared question her.

I pulled out my phone. The kitchen had security cameras. If I could pull up the footage-

My father snatched the device from my trembling hands before the app could load.

He hurled it onto the marble floor and brought his heavy boot down. The screen spiderwebbed with a sound like cracking ice. He ground his heel into the shattered glass.

"You're cut off," he spat. "No phone. No protection. No Family resources. Not until you learn respect."

He turned his back and stormed out of the dining hall, his Soldiers falling into formation behind him like shadows chained to his heels.

I didn't watch him leave.

My throat was closing. It felt like thick cotton being shoved down my windpipe, inch by inch, suffocating and dry and relentless.

I bolted from my chair. Ran.

Down the long hallway. Past the portraits of dead Dons. Into the reinforced bathroom. I collapsed to my knees in front of the toilet and gagged, trying desperately to purge whatever poison remained in my system.

Outside the door-the click of heels.

My mother's voice. Low. Casual. She was on the phone.

I pressed my burning forehead against the cold porcelain and strained to hear.

"I ground the narcotic into powder and boiled it into the rice water." A pause. "She needs to break, Elena. The weakness must be purged."

Elena. Her Capo. The woman she called her best friend.

The voice on speakerphone crackled back: "My soldiers were cured of worse in the cellar. Lock her in. She'll thank you when she's strong enough to lead."

My mother murmured agreement.

Then I heard it-the heavy metal deadbolt sliding into place on the outside of the bathroom door.

Click.

She'd locked me in.

The same psychological tactic they used on traitors in the underground cells. Isolation. Darkness. The slow suffocation of hope.

I coughed. Blood splattered across the white porcelain-bright red, visceral, steaming slightly in the cold bathroom air.

My skin was on fire.

Angry welts erupted along my arms and neck. Red. Swollen. Each one a burning island of agony. I clawed at my skin, and my fingernails came away wet.

Crawling to the door, I pounded my palms against the heavy wood. The impacts were weak, pathetic sounds-a dying animal scratching at the walls of its cage.

"Unlock the door." My voice was nothing now. A wheeze. A whisper. "Call the underground medic. Please. Please."

Her voice came through the door. Terrifyingly calm. Utterly steady.

"The laws of survival dictate that the weak must suffer to become strong. You will stay in there until you stop fighting me."

Her heels clicked away.

Fainter. Fainter. Gone.

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. Dark spots bloomed in my vision like ink spreading through water. My lungs screamed for oxygen that couldn't squeeze past my swollen throat.

I collapsed onto the cold tile floor. My cheek pressed against the hard, unforgiving surface. The weight of darkness pulled at the edges of my consciousness.

I sank into it.

A crash jolted me back.

The bathroom door burst open with explosive force. Wood splinters sprayed across the tile. Through the haze, I saw Nonna Rosa standing in the doorway-frail, trembling, her arthritic hands white-knuckled around a heavy iron fire poker.

She dropped the metal rod. It clanged against the floor.

And then she screamed.

The sound was raw. Animal. A grandmother looking at the broken body of her granddaughter, lying in a pool of her own blood, swollen beyond recognition.

She crumpled to her knees beside me. Her weathered hands-the same hands that had braided my hair when I was five, that had taught me to hold a knife, that had never once fed me poison-touched my burning skin.

Tears streamed down her wrinkled face.

She turned toward the empty hallway where my mother had abandoned me. Her voice rose, cracked, shattered-

"You murder your own blood, Vittoria! May hell take you for what you've done!"