Chapter 3

"You!"

I glared at Adriana in fury.

The twins clapped and laughed.

"Drenched rat! So gross!"

Marco flicked his fingers, and something small skittered across the marble toward me, a little toy that gave off electric shocks.

"No!"

A jolt of electricity shot through me.

I crashed into a table and fell to the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Somewhere behind me a soldier shifted his weight, hand drifting toward his jacket, then going still. No one at the Vitale feast moved to help the girl on the floor.

"Help me, it hurts!"

I cried out in pain. The carpet burned black where I had fallen. Foam bubbled at my lips as my body twitched.

Lorenzo looked truly shocked and started to step forward to cut the power.

But Adriana suddenly covered her mouth, pretending to be horrified. Her fingers tapped once against her collarbone, too fast, before the tears came.

"Sister, did you just wet yourself?"

Gasps spread across the room. Guests in their pressed dinner jackets stepped back, covering their noses like something reeked, the way men in this world learn to look away from a thing that is already dead.

My mind went blank from the shame.

"You… what are you saying?"

Adriana pouted. "Look at the floor yourself! What a mess!"

"You've never even given birth and you're already that loose? Did you cheat on Lorenzo with someone else?"

Just then two enforcers crossed the room and finally shut off the current.

But I had already lost control again. Lying there on the floor, soaked and shaking, all I wanted was to disappear.

Lorenzo's expression turned pitch black as if he wanted to tear me apart. He smoothed the lapel of his jacket with one flat downward stroke of his palm.

"Serafina, you're damn disgusting!"

"You're a grown woman and can't even control your bladder!"

Trembling, I tried to get up.

"…I didn't. It was them…"

I looked toward the twins, but Adriana had already taken them and disappeared into the crowd of made men and their painted wives.

Three days later, the whisper moved through every social club and back room the Family touched: [The Falcone Bride Fouls Herself at the Sit-Down]. In this world you do not print such things. You let them travel by mouth, and that is worse.

"This woman is disgusting."

"She probably slept around so much she can't hold it in anymore."

My name, my whereabouts, everything private about me was passed to the wrong hands, and the calls never stopped.

I broke down crying more than once and had no choice but to try reaching Lorenzo for help. But his consigliere blocked me at the door of the office above the front business.

"What did you just say?"

Blood pooled under my tongue as I bit down in shock, eyes wide.

The consigliere sneered.

"The Don said your kind reminded him of gutter women from nowhere, used up, worthless. He's gone to the doctor to see whether you left something on him."

My chest tightened sharply.

I couldn't even speak.

So in his eyes, I was already nothing but trash. A woman kept in the Family house without rank, without name, without blood that counted.

"Miss Vitale, you're here!"

The consigliere's tone instantly shifted, the way a man's voice bends toward the one who actually holds the power. That's when I saw Adriana strutting in on her high heels, the whole room straightening a little around her.

"Serafina, you still have the nerve to show up?"

"If I were you, I'd have already bashed my head in from the shame."

I knew then, this was all her doing.

"Why?" I asked, my voice shaking.

Back then, she was the one who wanted out of the union with Lorenzo. She had drugged me and staged it to look like I'd tried to steal the engagement and crawl into his bed.

Adriana acted like she'd just heard the funniest thing.

"Blame your own stupidity."

"This was the only way to make Lorenzo think about me forever."

She lifted my chin with a smirk.

"You didn't know, did you? For the past nine years, he's spent every feast day with me. Your anniversaries, the holy days, the New Year, he was in my bed."

"Do you know how good that felt?"

She looked me up and down.

"He told me that every time he touched you, it felt worse than handling a dirty rag."

My vision blurred with rage.

"Then why did you push my foster mother into debt?"

Adriana casually slid on her sunglasses, completely unbothered.