Chapter 6

Adriana slipped into her role the way she always did, effortless and rehearsed, the wounded lamb draped in silk that cost more than most soldiers earned in a year. Her lashes trembled. Her lower lip quivered on cue. The tears that gathered in her eyes never quite fell, because tears that fell would have ruined the picture she was painting.

"Salvatore, did I do something wrong?" she whispered, her voice thinning into something small and breakable. "Why is she so angry with me?" Her hand drifted to her hip, smoothing an invisible crease from the fabric, the composure beneath the performance flickering for half a heartbeat before she buried it again.

And of course, Salvatore moved. He stepped in front of her, planting himself between us like I was the loaded gun in the room, like I was the thing that needed to be contained. The gesture told me everything. In this life, as in the last, he would always choose to shield her from me.

"Clara, it's just a dress." His mouth curled, contempt sitting easy on a face I had once been foolish enough to love. "Besides, you're still going to wear it for me at the wedding, so what's the big deal? If the thing means that much to you, why not just sew another one?"

Something hot and dangerous rose in my throat. I felt it in my chest first, the old rage of a woman who had been buried once already and had crawled back up out of the dirt with her eyes open.

"Who says I'm wearing it for you?" The words came out colder than I intended, sharp enough to draw blood. "This is the dress I am wearing for my wedding."

Salvatore scoffed and shook his head, slow and pitying, the way a man shakes his head at a child who has embarrassed herself in front of company. He reached up and tugged once at his collar, rolled his shoulders inside his tailored jacket, a rich boy's tic he had never trained out of even now, when he still believed the throne of the Family was his by blood.

"Come on, Clara. Don't stand there and pretend you don't understand how this works. Your wedding is our wedding. I already gave my word I'd marry you before the Family. There's no need to keep up the little act."

That was the moment. That was the last thread.

I let my gaze fall to the table beside me, to the shears lying open on the linen, their steel catching the light. I did not hesitate. I picked them up, and the weight of them settled into my palm like something inevitable, and I walked toward the gown Adriana wore.

The room seemed to hold its breath. Even the air felt thinner, watchful, the way a room goes still when a made man reaches inside his coat and no one yet knows why. Adriana's painted eyes went wide. She did not move, because she did not understand yet that she should.

I closed the shears against the hem of her dress and drew them through the fabric in one clean line, the blades whispering as they cut, slicing the silk near her leg so the delicate thing hung ruined and gaping.

"Salvatore," I said, and my voice did not shake. Every word landed with the deliberate weight of a stone dropped into still water. "Since you're so certain of yourself, watch closely. I won't settle for anything dirty. And I will not keep a dress that's been stained."

Salvatore froze. His eyes stretched wide, and for the first time in either of my lives, I watched genuine shock strip the arrogance from his face. He had seen me a thousand ways. Playful. Sulking. Foolishly, desperately in love. He had never once seen me like this. Never seen the woman who stood in front of him now with steel in her hand and nothing left to lose behind her eyes.

His instincts fired late, the way they always did. He lunged toward me, one hand reaching to catch my wrist. But Adriana's voice cut across the tension first, high and quivering and perfectly timed, the way a knife is timed to slide between ribs.

"Salvatore, my leg! I think I've scraped it, it hurts, it really hurts, but don't, don't worry about me. Go to her. This is all my fault, I never should have worn it, please..."

Her hand fluttered to the torn fabric. Her smile came, and it came a half-second too fast, the crack showing beneath it before she smoothed it away.

Salvatore stopped. He hung there, caught between us, his gaze swinging from my retreating shape to the trembling girl behind him and back again. The silence stretched long enough to suffocate a man. When he finally spoke, his voice had gone flat with contempt, every ounce of tenderness he owned reserved for her and not a drop of it left for me.

"Don't bother with her. An insecure woman like that needs to be taught her place. Maybe this will give her something to reflect on."

I had no answer for that. There was none.

My body had gone numb from the fingertips inward, and my heart felt as though it had dropped clean through the floor and kept falling, down into some cold void with no bottom to it. I simply stood there, motionless, watching the wedding dress I had poured my whole ruined soul into begin to come apart in my own hands. The fine fabric unraveled thread by thread where I had cut it, delicate and slow, the way everything in my life had always come undone once he touched it.

I lifted a hand and wiped quietly at my eyes, once, careful, trying to hold the pieces of myself together in that silent, watching room. But the weight of it landed on me all at once, the full crushing freight of everything I had already lost and everything I was losing again. All that work. All that hope stitched into every seam.

Gone in an instant.