SIX FURIES AND A ROSE

CHAPTER 5

I looked in the mirror. The girl who stared back wasn't Raphaella, the cherished sister. She was someone else. Someone with secrets. My heart hammered against my ribs.

I slipped into the east wing’s disused servant stairwell.

I held my breath as I input the four-digit code on the keypad by the delivery entrance—Gabe’s birthday—and nearly wept with relief when the tiny light turned from red to green with a soft click.

I slid out into the cool, damp night, the smell of turned earth from the greenhouse filling my lungs with freedom.

I ran, the boots silent on the mossy path, until I reached the crumbling asphalt of the old service road. Two minutes later, Chloe’s beat-up hatchback coasted to a stop, lights off.

The passenger window rolled down. Chloe’s eyes widened, her mouth forming a silent ‘O’.

“Holy hell, Rafe,” she finally breathed. “You look… you look like sin and vengeance. They would literally have a collective heart attack.”

A wild, giddy laugh burst from me as I slid into the car. “That’s the idea.”

“Alright, fugitive,”

Chloe said, flipping on the radio. A pulsing bassline filled the car. “Let’s go to a party.”

10 MINUTES LATER

Chloe and I lost ourselves in the crowd, dancing until our hair stuck to our necks and our throats were raw from laughing.

Near a makeshift bar, under a spinning red light, was Ethan.

His arm was slung around a girl in a sequined tube top, her hands tangled in his hair as they kissed.

Not a peck. A deep, familiar, party-kiss.

“What the f**k,” I breathed, the words swallowed by the bass.

I didn’t think. I moved.

Weaving through the dancers, I didn't feel the bodies I pushed past.

I stopped in front of them.

They broke apart, the girl looking annoyed, Ethan’s face cycling through surprise, guilt, and then a defensive confusion.

“Rafe? What are you—?”

The slap cracked through the air, sharper than the snare drum in the music. My palm stung. His head snapped to the side. The sequined girl gasped.

“What am I doing here?”

I spat, my voice trembling with rage.

“What are you doing, Ethan? Was your ‘concern’ about my curfew just a cover while you made other plans?”

He rubbed his cheek, his eyes wide.

“It’s not what it looks like! She’s just a friend from my poli-sci class, we were drunk, and you were so mad at me after your brothers, I thought you were done—”

“You’re a coward,” I cut him off, the words icy. “And a liar.” I shoved him, hard, in the chest. He stumbled back into the girl, who squealed.

Turning on my heel, I pushed my way back through the crowd, the need for air, for space, for anything that wasn’t this suffocating betrayal, becoming urgent.

I saw Chloe, who had witnessed the whole thing from a few feet away.

Our eyes met. I gave a sharp shake of my head—don’t follow me—and saw her nod, her own expression shifting from shock to molten anger as she turned back toward Ethan.

————————————————————————

I was so lost in the storm of my own humiliation that I didn’t hear the footsteps until they were too close.

“Hey, beautiful. Party too much for you?” A man’s voice, slick and too close, cut through the din.

I flinched, wiping hastily at my face. He was older, with a leering smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes.

“I’m fine. Just need a minute.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you need some company.”

He took another step, invading the little space I had. The smell of cheap beer and cheaper cologne hit me.

“I said I’m fine.”

I straightened up, trying to summon the Scarlatti ice in my voice, but it came out shaky.

“Please leave me alone.”

His hand shot out, clamping around my wrist. His grip was like iron.

“C’mon, don’t be like that. I’ll get you a drink. Help you forget whatever loser made you cry.”

Panic, sharp and acrid, rose in my throat.

“Let go of me. Now.”

He just laughed, pulling me slightly toward him.

“Or what?”

“Or you’ll find out what happens when you put your hands on a Scarlatti.”

The voice came from the mouth of the alley.

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in over a year, but

I’d know its timbre anywhere.

The man’s head swiveled. I followed his gaze.

Alexander “Lex” Conti stood under a flickering streetlight, backlit so his face was in shadow.

But his silhouette was unmistakable—the elegant, relaxed posture that was somehow more threatening than any aggressive stance.

He wasn’t looking at me. His entire focus was on the man holding my wrist.

“I believe the lady asked you to let go,”

Lex said, taking one slow, deliberate step forward.

“I’m only going to ask once.”

Something in his tone—the absolute, unshakable certainty of violence—communicated itself instantly.

The man’s bravado evaporated.

He dropped my arm as if it had burned him, muttering a curse, and scurried past Lex and out into the street, disappearing into the night.

Only then did Lex’s gaze shift to me.

He stepped fully into the dim light, and I saw the familiar, handsome lines of his face, sharper now, perhaps tired from travel.

His dark eyes took me in with a single, sweeping glance that missed nothing: the tear-streaked mascara, the heaving chest, the daring black dress that now felt ridiculous and exposed.

A complex storm of emotions passed through his eyes—shock, concern, a flicker of something hotter that was gone before I could name it, settling into a stern, almost paternal disapproval.

Without a word, he shrugged out of his impeccably tailored charcoal wool coat and stepped forward.

He didn’t hand it to me. He draped it over my shoulders, his hands resting there for a brief, steadying moment.

The coat was warm from his body and smelled like him—sandalwood, crisp linen, and something uniquely Lex.