Chapter 5

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, the exhaustion sitting in my bones like wet cement. The study still smelled of him — Turkish tobacco gone cold in the crystal tray, the leather of chairs no one but the Family ever sat in.

"Just leave them there," I said, my voice listless. The deeds. The will. All of it, laid out on the desk where I'd set them back exactly as I'd found them.

My phone chimed against the marble, a bright, ordinary sound in a room that had never held anything ordinary. Some feed, some update. Curious in the numb way a person picks at a wound, I tapped it open.

Lucia had posted a video.

In it, she stood on the deck of a yacht, the water behind her the flat, obscene blue of stolen leisure. A bikini, a fishing line, her laughter tipped up at the sky. And a man's arms wrapped snugly around her slim waist from behind, possessive, easy, the way a man holds only what he has already decided is his. Even through the shaky footage I knew the watch on his wrist. I had given it to Salvatore last year. I had chosen it myself, spent a week deciding, imagined his face when he opened it.

The location tag read across the bottom in careless little letters. Not the harbor. Not the Territory at all. Somewhere warm and far from the sit-down he'd sworn kept him away from me.

A dull ache spread through my chest, sharp and relentless, the kind that doesn't announce itself so much as move in. So the reason the Don had postponed our blood-bound union wasn't the business he claimed pressed on him. It wasn't the score, or the meet, or the enemies at the edges of the map. It was to stand behind the woman he truly cherished on a yacht in the sun, his hands at her waist, while I sat in his house counting his lies like rosary beads.

I went through the motions of washing up. Cold water on my face, my thumb brushing without meaning to over the thin skin of my left wrist. Then I called for a car back to the villa to pack my things. The soldier at the gate nodded me through without a word, the way they'd nodded me through for three years, as if I belonged. I let them think it a little longer.

I was zipping the last of my life into a suitcase when the bell sounded. The bridal house Salvatore had arranged, the one whose atelier only opened its doors for the families that mattered, had sent a courier with a sample gown.

"Delivery for Lucia Gambino. A bespoke gown, commissioned by Don Marchetti himself. Congratulations on your union, Miss Gambino," the courier announced, brightly, holding the garment bag aloft like an offering.

I froze. I stared at the long white shape hanging from his hand, the unmistakable seal of the house's highest collection stamped into the cloth. The gown Salvatore had chosen for me, on that trip to their headquarters when I'd let myself believe he was choosing me, had been a limited runway piece. Beautiful, yes. But something taken off a rack, however rare.

This was made. Measured to a body, stitched by hand, dreamed over. The difference wasn't in the craftsmanship. It was in the intention. One was a gesture. The other was a promise. And the promise had never once been meant for me.

I forced a bitter smile up from somewhere. "Thank you. But I'm not Lucia."

The courier blinked, confused, his brightness faltering. Then his expression shifted as the understanding landed on him, ugly and complete. He stammered a string of apologies, backing toward the door, the garment bag suddenly awkward in his arms, and hurried off before I could watch his pity curdle any further.

I stood in the doorway and watched the delivery crew fold themselves back into their vehicle. And in the corner of my eye, movement. Two figures coming up the drive together, unhurried, the way people walk when they have nothing to hide from each other.

Salvatore had returned. And Lucia was with him.

"Hi, cousin. How are you? It's so good to see you." She greeted me with a warmth that overflowed and meant nothing, the enthusiasm of someone performing tenderness for an audience she thinks is too dull to notice. Her head tilted, and the laugh came a half-beat early, bubbling up before she'd said anything worth laughing at. "I was going to drop by anyway, and I ran into your fiancé down in the parking lot. So we walked up together. I hope you don't mind."

The way she leaned into don't mind was a knife slipped between two ribs, testing which one would give.

Salvatore's brow drew down, a flicker of something crossing his face, annoyance at the word fiancé the way a man is annoyed by a title he never intended to keep. His right hand moved at his side, the heavy signet ring turning slow circles against his finger, around and around, the small unconscious rhythm of a man perfectly in control of everything and everyone in front of him.

I forced the smile to hold. "Of course not."

Why would I mind. I'd be gone soon enough, a name crossed off a ledger, a debt he'd never know he'd left unpaid. Salvatore didn't love me. He never had. And whether I minded or not would make no difference at all to the way this ended.