Chapter 4

Enzo's POV

But everything I did was useless. Maybe the truth had never mattered to Portia at all. Not once in eight years bound to her blood.

"It's raining now. Perfect," she snapped. "Go stand in it and reflect on your pathetic self."

Then she kicked me. Hard. Right between my thighs.

She slid into the car with her nineteenth consort and drove off without looking back, the tires spitting gravel across the estate drive.

The exhaust blasted straight into my face.

The rain kept pouring, pounding down like rocks, drenching me and beating me into a mess on the ground beyond the Falcone gates.

Then headlights cut through the blur. A horn sounded, low and steady.

It was Adriana.

She stepped out without bothering with an umbrella, the rain flattening her dark coat to her frame, dragged me into the passenger seat, and said, "Do you want to go home, or…?"

"To my mother's," I rasped.

Whatever "home" had meant inside the Falcone walls, I never wanted to set foot in that place again.

We drove to the cardiovascular hospital where my mother was being kept. My shirt still clung to my skin from the rain.

The moment we crossed the threshold, I ran into the attending physician.

I greeted him fast, asking about the surgery.

But he scoffed, looking at me the way men look at something they've already decided is worthless.

"Never seen a more ungrateful son," he snapped. "You gave up on your mother's surgery and took the money for the tables?"

I blinked. "What? No. I signed the forms myself. I moved the tribute straight into the hospital's account. How could I—"

"Yeah?" The doctor frowned. "She was scheduled yesterday. The account was empty. We called you. You told us to cancel it because you were off to Alaska to gamble."

"What?" My head spun.

My phone had been dark since I collapsed. Dead three days. But when I thumbed it on, the battery still sat half full.

Someone used it while I was out. Someone wore my name and called the hospital in my voice.

"How is my mother now?" My whole body started shaking.

The doctor let out a heavy sigh. "She passed this morning. We tried to reach you again, but… Her body's in the morgue."

Everything in me went… numb.

I dropped to my knees, then scrambled up and ran straight for the morgue.

I pushed through doors, down cold hallways that smelled of antiseptic and something older beneath it. My knees gave out the second I saw her.

Everett. Still. Cold. Gone.

Her rough, work-worn hands lay folded in her lap the way they always had, and this time nothing lifted her chin, nothing left in her to protect me from.

The tears came all at once, ripping out of me like something primal.

I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and called Portia.

"You said the tribute was released. Where the hell is it?"

But the voice that answered wasn't hers.

It was Rocco. That son of a bitch.

"I held onto it," he said, easy as ever. "Figured I'd watch how you behave before I let the blood-money go."

"That was set aside for my mother's surgery," I shouted.

"Oh, yeah. Canceled it for you," he said, the smirk audible in every word. "No surgery, no money needed."

"You… It was you…" My rage boiled over, and I coughed up blood onto the tile.

"What can I say? Working you over makes my girl smile. Best entertainment in the city." And he actually laughed.

Then I heard Portia's voice behind him. "Baby, who's on the phone?"

"Enzo," Rocco drawled. "Begging for his tribute. Told him he's been slacking, so it stays put."

"Good boy," she giggled. "Tell him if he wants that money, he can kneel outside the front gate all night."

"And if he won't," she added sweetly, "we cut every payment on his mother's bills this month."

Then she leaned close to the phone. "Hear that, Enzo? One night. On your knees."

Rocco chuckled. "You heard the lady."

Then came the sound of them, right there, into the speaker, while I stood beside my dead mother.

I ended the call. I couldn't even scream. The humiliation pressed down so heavy I couldn't breathe.

I knelt beside her body, hands trembling, and whispered through my sobs. "I'm sorry, Mom… I'm so sorry…"

I pressed my thumb hard against the inside of my left wrist, counting a heartbeat that wouldn't slow, the way I had through every year of it. Then I let the hand fall open against the cold metal of the table, and I stopped counting.

I cried like I hadn't in years.

Adriana stayed with me the whole time, silent in the doorway, asking nothing.

And in the morning, when I could finally speak again, I brought the reckoning to the ones who owed for this. I asked Adriana to draw the papers that would sever the alliance.

Then I left the city and went home.

To bury my mother.

Portia's POV

I didn't lay eyes on Enzo, that bastard, for three days.

No answers to my messages. He actually ignored my calls.

And then? A summons to a sit-down over the dissolution of the alliance landed at my door.

I swept into the Consigliera's office with number nineteen a step behind me, both of us fuming.

"Where are you hiding Enzo?" I demanded, my voice climbing at Adriana.

That smug bitch didn't even blink. She set the folder in her hands down on the desk and squared its edge parallel to the table's before she spoke.

"He went home three days ago. His mother passed. He's burying her."