Chapter 1

I was born strong.

At five, I lifted a car off a fallen stable hand. At eight, I ripped a wrought-iron gate clean off its hinges. At ten, I broke a grown man's neck with my bare hands.

Then the Bianchi family finally brought me back to New York from the countryside. And the first night I was home, my mother sat me down, took my hands in hers, and cried.

"A girl's hands aren't made for guns, sweetheart. They're made for diamonds."

So I put my fists away. For her. To make her love me, I learned piano. French. Ballet. I stopped taking big steps. Stopped raising my voice.

Until the day I died on a hospital bed. They cut my baby out of me and handed her straight to Sabrina, my adopted sister.

And the woman I loved most in the world, the woman I called Mama, said:

"She's just some kid we picked up out in the country. If she dies, she dies."

"Giving Sabrina a baby is the biggest blessing that girl will ever have."

I open my eyes.

Chandeliers. White lilies. Expensive perfume.

I know this room. I know this dress. Ivory silk. Pearls at the throat. The corset my mother laced herself an hour ago.

It's my eighteenth birthday. My debut ball. The night the Bianchi family officially presents me to the Commission as their firstborn.

Two hundred guests downstairs. Every made man on the East Coast. All of them waiting for me to come down that marble staircase and play Chopin like a good little songbird.

Sabrina glides up next to me. Soft eyes. Soft voice. Squeezes my arm.

"Don't be nervous, Nora. Everyone's gonna love you."

I look at her.

The girl who's gonna hold my baby while I'm still bleeding out on that hospital bed.

I smile.

"Thanks, Sabrina."

Then I walk downstairs, past the piano, straight out into the ballroom.

The main table stretches down the middle of the room. My father at the head. My mother on his right. Sabrina's chair waiting on his left. Ten feet of solid mahogany, crystal glasses, catered lobster, and a wedding-cake-sized centerpiece shaped like the Bianchi family crest.

Six of my father's guys are lined up along the wall behind him. Suited. Strapped. His personal detail.

I walk right past them.

I stop at the head of the table. I grip the edge with both hands.

And I flip the whole goddamn thing.

The table launches. Ten feet of mahogany, forty place settings, three ice sculptures, all of it goes airborne. Comes back down on my father, my mother, and Sabrina like a freight train.

My father goes down first. My mother screams and gets buried under crystal. Sabrina takes a chair leg to the ribs and drops.

The ballroom explodes.

People screaming. Running. A senator's wife trips on her gown and eats marble. The six guys along the wall pull their guns and come at me.

Good.

The first one swings his pistol at my head. I catch his wrist, twist, and hear the bone snap like a chicken wing. He drops. I put my elbow through the second one's jaw. He hits the wall and slides down it.

Third one gets a knee to the gut, then my heel to the back of his skull on the way down. Fourth one pulls a knife. I take it off him and put him on the ground with it still in my hand. Five and six come at me together.

I grab them by the collars and slam their heads together so hard I hear something crack.

Six seconds. Six men.

I straighten up. I smooth my dress. I flick a piece of lobster off my shoulder.

Nobody thought sweet little Nora Bianchi could do that.

I look around the room. I smile like a lady.

"You wanted a performance? There it is."

"Clap."

"You—"

A groan from under the table. My father drags himself out of the wreckage. Tux shredded. Blood in his mouth. Plaster in his hair.

Don Salvatore Bianchi. The most feared man in New York. Right now he looks like a drunk who lost a bar fight.

He points a shaking finger at me.

"You ungrateful little bitch."

"You know what tonight is? The whole Commission is out there. Two hundred guests. And you pull this shit?"

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?"

"Is this how you talk to your mother? To me?"

"Where's your respect?"

Respect.

The first thing they ever taught me was to forget who I was.

They said I was too rough. Too wild. That I'd been raised in the sticks and my hands were too used to knives.

My mother held my hands in hers, crying those pretty tears.

"Nora, baby. You're a Bianchi now. Girls in this family don't throw punches. Girls in this family hold pearls."

I wanted her love so bad I let her rewrite me.

I practiced piano till my fingers cramped. I danced till my feet bled. I could've put a man through a brick wall. Instead I learned how to hold a teacup.

Riding, shooting, fighting. That's what I was born for. Instead they stuffed me into couture and locked me in a townhouse uptown.

I even said yes when they arranged my marriage. To a man I didn't love. For them.

I told myself if I turned into exactly what they wanted, they'd finally let me in.

Then came the delivery room.

Blood everywhere. Soaking the sheets. I pushed till I couldn't breathe, and the second she cried, they took her. I didn't even get to see her face.

They handed her straight to Sabrina. Because the family needed a real Bianchi baby, and Sabrina couldn't give them one.

They left me on that bed. Bleeding out. The doctor washed his hands and walked out. Nobody came back in.

The last thing I heard before I died was my mother's voice, calm as a Sunday morning:

"She's just some kid we picked up out in the country. If she dies, she dies. Sabrina can't have children of her own. Giving Sabrina a baby is the biggest blessing that girl will ever have."

Turns out the family I spent my whole life trying to earn was never mine.

Never was.