Four Orphan Girls Raised To Be The Mafia Heir’s Wife. And I Only Wanted His Empire. Chapter 04
The Farewell
They send Maisie home three days later.
Not home to the annex. Home to the nowhere town she came from.
The Kain family wires her parents a fat check. Along with a warning: if Maisie ever sets foot in this city again, or speaks the Kain name out loud, the money won’t be the only thing that disappears.
It’s a clean removal. Generous, even, by their standards. In mafia family, people who become problems get two options: take the money and vanish, or just vanish.
I’m the only one allowed to visit her in the hospital before she goes.
She’s lying in bed with her leg in a cast that runs from ankle to thigh. Her face is hollow. The room smells like antiseptic and something else. Something dead.
Three days ago she was glowing, spinning in circles, clutching that whistle like a love letter. Now she looks like something that’s been left out in a storm too long and forgotten.
She reaches under her pillow and pulls out the silver whistle. Places it in my palm without looking at it. Her fingers are ice cold.
“It was all fake.”
Her voice is raw. Scraped clean of everything it used to hold. No tears. No anger. Just ash.
“Camille hid a needle under my saddle. The groom who prepped my horse was one of her family’s men. She spooked it on purpose, then fake-fell in front of Alistair so he’d run to her instead of me. The whole thing was a setup.”
She stares at the ceiling like she’s replaying it behind her eyes.
“And Alistair knew. He knew the whole time. He didn’t just let it happen. He approved it.”
Her throat bobs.
“I was in his way. So he helped her stage the whole thing and kicked me out like I was nothing. Like I was never even here.”
Her hand shoots out and grabs mine. Her grip is skeletal, trembling, but fierce. Like she’s holding on to the last solid thing in her world.
“Iris. You’re the smartest one of us. You have to be careful.”
Her eyes finally meet mine. Dead. Flat. But underneath, something still burning.
“Don’t trust Alistair. Don’t trust anyone in this house. These people will destroy you and call it cleanup. Stay alive. And when you can…”
She squeezes harder. I feel her bones through her skin.
“Burn it all down.”
I close my fingers around the whistle. The metal digs into my palm, sharp and cold. A small, clean pain.
I look at her. At what they did to her. A girl who just wanted to be loved, snapped in half and shipped away like damaged goods.
I nod.
“I will.”
She lets go. Her hand drops to the mattress like it weighs a hundred pounds. She turns her face to the wall, and I know the conversation is over.
I walk out of that hospital room with the whistle in my pocket and her words in my chest.
Back at the annex, it’s quieter now. One bed empty. One less plate at the table. One less girl in the running.
Piper hasn’t spoken a word since Maisie left. She locks herself in her studio all day, painting in grays and blacks, filling canvas after canvas with nothing but shadow.
But Piper has a secret. We all know about it.
She’s been seeing someone. An art student named Daniel. No money, no family name, no connections. Just raw talent and a desperate, reckless love for her. He’s the one thing in Piper’s life that actually belongs to her and not to the mafia family.
She guards it like her life depends on it.
But in mafia family, nothing stays hidden. Not when there are people willing to sell your secrets for their own safety.
And Camille Ashford has eyes everywhere.