BOUND BY THE MAFIA HEIR'S BLOOD

Blaise's POV The certificate still smelled like fresh ink, and I already wanted to toss it in the trash. Four years. That’s how long I played along, charity getting passed off as education. Four years of kids letting me know, without saying a word, that I didn’t belong here. Kids who spent more on shoes than my stepdad made in a year of driving trucks up and down the highway. And now, after all that, what do I have? A crumpled piece of paper and a stage handshake from a headmaster who checked his notes for my name. I stood at the edge of the courtyard, the blue gown itching against my skin while parents squeezed their kids under a tsunami of gold confetti, probably cost more than my family’s car. Didn’t feel a thing. All I wanted was to get out of there. Tonight, I finally could. “Blaise. Blaise, hey.” Nina grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward the bleachers behind the gym, heels hooked on her fingers, gown balled up in her other hand. “One last night. All three of us. I am not spending it watching Serena Bianchi’s mother sob over table decorations.” Aurora climbed up after us, grinning for no reason and every reason, her laugh bubbling up after a little too much champagne at her parents’ pre-ceremony thing. “Time for the dare.” “Not a dare,” Nina said, dropping onto the bench beside her. “A bet. Something important.” “A bet, then.” I wedged myself between them, eyeing both like they’d really lost it this time. Maybe they had. “Terms?” “One,” Aurora started, raising her finger. “Someone real. No freshmen, no one who’d freak out for real.” “Two,” Nina jumped in, “Nobody gets hurt. Our secret. Forever.” “Three,” Aurora grinned, slow and dangerous. “My idea, I call the shots.” “It was my idea,” Nina shot back. “You just yell louder.” I cut them off before they could spiral into another shouting match. “Enough. Go on, Aurora. Hit me.” She grinned, a look that meant she’d been waiting for this. “Pick the most off-limits guy in our year. Someone impossibly out of your league. Do something tonight with him that neither of us would guess.” She leaned in, dropping her voice to make it serious. “Kidnap him. For a week. Hide him where nobody thinks to look. And before you let him go,” her eyes caught the light, “You don’t leave the same person. Neither does he.” I stared, waiting for the punchline. Aurora never blinks first, not with champagne in her. I laughed anyway, a nervous, shaky kind of laugh. “You two are insane.” Still, something reckless burned inside me. The kind of heat you get just before a mistake you know you’ll never forget. I had seven days until I was gone from this city forever. Why not? “You’re on a plane in a week,” Nina said, her voice quieter now. “Who cares whose heart you break?” Aurora went quiet, the bravado slipping. “You’re really leaving.” “I told you.” She gave me that old look, like she was trying to memorize my face before I vanished. “You got into three schools here, Blaise. You could stay.” “Only if I want to stay the charity case. No thanks.” I stood, dusting off my gown. “Four more years of pretending to be grateful? I’m not doing it.” Nina nudged me, gentle for once. “Let’s send you off right.” “So,” Aurora pulled herself together, “who?” I looked past them at the crowd, at kids drifting in their pretty blue gowns under fairy lights, laughter floating from the fountain where the rich ones plotted summer vacations on boats I’d only seen in magazines. My eyes found him. Santino De Vas. He stood alone, jacket off, gown slung over his shoulder, staring at the sunset like he expected it to say sorry. Blonde catching the last rays, gray eyes so pale they looked silver and distant, making the noisy boys next to him look ridiculous. He’d only been at Vespera Crown five months, dropped in after years of private tutors, so people said. I’d never heard him raise his voice, not at teachers, not even when boys joked about his money. Always watching. Always quiet. Not bored, just planned. I noticed him the way you notice a locked door in a house you know too well, curious, because it doesn’t fit. Lunch alone, same spot, a book always open but never moving. Never in chats, never at parties we all assumed he skipped on purpose. Most of the girls in our year tried and gave up, saying he was boring, or broken, and moved on. I never thought he was boring. “Him,” I said, quickly, before I could regret it. Aurora nearly slid off the bench. “Santino? No way. You’re joking.” “Why not? Your rules.” She grabbed my wrist, like she could claw the idea back. “Nobody knows anything about his family. My mom says his father skips every fundraiser but shows up everywhere else in town.” My fingers found the little pendant at my neck, the only thing I kept from before the orphanage, the only thing mine before anyone decided who I should be. I let it drop and stood. “So what? That’s exactly why. He has no story here. I could write him one. See what happens when someone locked-tight finally cracks.” I shrugged. “Then I vanish, and never think about any of this again.” Nina said, “Lay out the rules or admit you’re bluffing.” “No cops. Nobody gets hurt. I’m gone before they know he’s missing. It’s ours. Forever.” I let the silence sit. I’d said it. Now I had to do it. “Tonight. Old hideout. Seven days. By the time anyone figures it out, I’m gone.” Aurora stared like she didn’t recognize me. Nina looked ready to explode. “You’re really doing this,” Aurora said. I walked off before they could stop me. I found him behind the science building, by the busted camera at the gate, the one spot on campus I’d scoped out freshman year, back when keeping track of exits was survival. He was already watching me before I got close. Not surprised, like he’d been waiting to see what I’d do. “You’re Santino, right?” “And you’re the one who argues with Renzi for sport.” His mouth did something almost like a smile. “Congrats, by the way.” “He’s usually wrong.” I put on my softest face, chin tucked a little, gave him an apologetic half-smile, the one that sometimes kept angry landlords from locking me out. “Need a hand, actually. Something heavy in the groundskeeper’s shed. Ten minutes, tops.” Total lie. But he’d been raised right, and guys like him don’t let girls haul things alone. Not at graduation, not where everyone’s watching. “Lead the way,” he said. “Though I’m not exactly strong.” “We’ll manage.” I took him across the lawn, pulse pounding louder than the music still drifting from the party. The shed stank of dust and motor oil. He went in first, frowning at the empty room. “So, what exactly am I,” I didn’t let him finish. The syringe went in his neck before he got the words out. His eyes went wide, not scared, just shocked, like he couldn’t believe his instincts let him down. “You’ll forgive me,” I said. Not sure I even believed it. His knees gave out first. I caught him as he slid down, easing him into the dust. And there I stood, over the quietest, most untouchable boy in Vespera Crown Academy, completely still, absolutely mine, for the next seven days. Then headlights swept across the cracked window and stopped. No door, no horn. Just an engine idling. Someone sitting, waiting like they had nothing better to do. My back went flat to the wall, heart in my throat. The car inched forward, just enough for the light to catch the driver’s hand on the wheel. A ring, big, gold, carved with something I couldn’t quite read. I didn’t have to. I’d seen a ring like that in a magazine photo, half-buried on Aurora’s mother’s coffee table, in an article about Vespera’s Old Families. I looked down at Santino, out cold at my feet, and felt the first flash of real fear, the kind that isn’t about getting caught. Whoever was in that car wasn’t looking for a lost tool. They were looking for him.