As Martinez went back to his plans for revenge, I stayed there, unseen and unknown. A ghost in the chaos of his world. My body had been found, but the truth of who I was was still hidden. Martinez didn’t know yet that the girl lying in that pile of trash was his own daughter. He didn’t know that the war he was fighting had already cost him something far more precious than he could ever imagine.
And when he will finally found out, it would be too late.
They wrapped my body up, zipped tight in a black bag, and shipped it back to the morgue like just another piece of evidence. No one knew who I was yet. Just another nameless girl left to rot in the city’s underbelly.
"It’s gonna take days to ID her," the forensic expert muttered, shaking his head as they loaded my body into the van. "The face is too damaged for a visual, and with no fingerprints, DNA is our only option."
Martinez would never know it was me. Not right away. And even if he did, I wonder if it would’ve mattered. After all, I was never his priority.
For as long as I can remember, Martinez always favored Leo—his adopted son, his enforcer, his right hand in the Mafia. Leo was everything I wasn’t. Loyal. Ruthless. Willing to do whatever it took to climb the ranks of my father’s criminal empire. Meanwhile, I was the daughter kept at arm’s length, shut out from the family business as if I didn’t belong.
Martinez was a king, and Leo was his chosen heir. Me? I was just an afterthought, something to be hidden away.
As I floated there, watching them transport my lifeless body, my mind wandered back to all the times I had tried to be seen by him, to matter. But it was never enough. Martinez never wanted me involved. He made that clear from day one.
Growing up in that house, it was easy to feel invisible. While Martinez and Leo sat at the table, discussing deals, territory, and power, I was always sent to my room. I wasn’t part of that world—wasn’t meant to be. Martinez would look at me with those cold eyes, always distant, like I was some fragile thing he didn’t know what to do with.
"Stay out of it, Selene," he’d say. "This isn’t your place."
But Leo? Leo was always welcome at his side. Martinez molded him, shaped him into the perfect soldier, while I watched from the sidelines, wondering why I wasn’t enough.