Chapter 14: Worth Everything

They tie me to a steel column in a dead factory outside the city. The rope cuts my wrists open. Blood runs down my forearms and drips off my elbows onto the concrete, and Rossi's men laugh and drink and place bets. Rossi walks up and takes my chin again. "Do you think he's coming, little bird?" I lift my head. "No," I say. "He threw me away yesterday." That's what I say out loud. What I say inside, over and over, with my whole ruined heart, is: Don't come. Don't you dare come. Stay alive. The...