Chapter 2

The words had barely left Enzo's mouth when the hospital room door slammed open.

"Vera Marino, you jinx!"

Rossana — Luca's mother, the so-called *future* matriarch of the Corleone estate.

She came rushing in, eyes bloodshot, hand already raised to strike me across the face.

This time, I was ready. I gave a cold smile and stepped back.

Rossana put too much force behind the swing, hit nothing but air, and stumbled forward, sprawling across the chair behind her. Half her carefully arranged updo came loose, snagged on her pearl tassels.

She didn't even feel the pain. She jabbed a finger at my nose, screaming.

"Where is Luca? I asked you, where is Luca!"

"How did I ever pick a useless wife like you for him? If Luca doesn't make it back, if the family falls to that little bastard, I'll skin you alive!"

Behind her came a pack of distant relatives who'd been mooching off the Corleone coffers for years.

Every one of them had drunk her wine at the Long Island estate, worn the gold chains she'd doled out. Now they all swarmed around me, spitting as they shouted.

"Useless! Can't even get her own man to come home! If Master Luca doesn't inherit the Don's seat, we'll have your hide!"

"That's the Marinos for you. They marry off nothing but garbage!"

I watched their ugly faces with cold eyes.

I knew exactly what they were afraid of.

Rossana wasn't the real matriarch.

She had started out as one of Vittorio's mistresses. When the actual Donna was pregnant, Rossana rushed to give birth to Luca first.

Twenty years ago, when the Donna was about to deliver, Rossana deliberately showed up with infant Luca in her arms to provoke her. The shock sent the Donna into early labor — she hemorrhaged and died on the operating table at Mount Sinai.

The motherless second son, Damian, became the enemy of Rossana and Luca from the moment he could understand words.

At best, he was publicly humiliated at family dinners. At worst, he was locked in the wine cellar and beaten with belts.

Eventually, under the pretext of "toughening him up," they shipped Damian off to the Sicilian countryside, sealing him out of the Corleone family's core power.

As for Vittorio —

he had let Rossana live in the Long Island estate, but he never thought her fit for the role. In all those years, he had never once acknowledged her status in front of anyone else.

Which meant: the moment Vittorio died, if Luca failed to claim that ring,

Rossana wouldn't even hold the title of "Corleone widow." By the family's own rules, she'd be thrown out without ceremony.

Now, eyes blood-red with panic, she lunged forward and grabbed my wrist.

"Are you deaf? Call that little hanger-on next to Luca! Tell him to bring my son back this instant!"

I looked at her coldly, said nothing, and obediently dialed Marco's number.

This time, it picked up fast.

The background was still all laughter and cheers, the boom of fireworks bursting overhead, and Sofia's deliberately amplified, soft, girlish giggles.

"Vera, are you fucking serious right now?"

Marco's lazy, smarmy tone shoved its way through.

"Can't you give your man a little personal space? Stop clinging to Luca like some pitiful, nagging old housewife."

He warmed to his own performance, even taking on a lecturing tone.

"You want my honest opinion? If you were my wife, I'd beat you ten times a day, just to knock some sense into you."

"A woman should stay home, iron the shirts, boil the pasta. Stop sticking her nose in a man's real business!"

His arrogance was so brazen that the whole room went still.

Enzo's graying eyebrows knotted into a furious tangle. The priest instinctively crossed himself.

But I stayed perfectly calm. I slowed my voice deliberately, hammering down each word.

"Marco. I don't care whether you believe me."

"The Don is dying."

"He has left his will. Whichever son — Luca or Damian — reaches his bedside first to take the family ring, that son inherits the Corleone family."

On the other end, a strange silence fell.

Only the faint sputtering of distant fireworks remained.

Marco's tone shifted, suddenly uncertain. "You... you serious?"

Rossana caught his words like a lifeline. She rushed to the phone, weeping with relief.

"It's true! It's true! Marco, get Luca back, I'm begging you, this is the whole Corleone family at stake!"

"Oh... well, if it's true, I'll go report it to Luca right now." Marco answered, smooth as silk.

Rossana let out a long breath, patting her chest, muttering: "Thank God... as long as Luca comes back..."

The next second, the phone erupted with the most unrestrained, mocking laughter.

Marco was howling, gasping for breath, as if he'd just heard the most ridiculous joke in the world.

"Oh my *God*, Vera, you really are good at pretending, aren't you? I already called your bluff and you're still putting on the whole show with your little troupe of actors?"

He let out a smug snort.

"Let me tell you something. Luca just made his position very clear."

"Even if God Himself came down from heaven tonight, He couldn't interrupt the private world of him and my sister!"

"Your sob-story act is so last season."

"Be smart. Get the hell out."

"Luca's going to file for divorce. For the rest of your life, you can dream all you want, but you'll never set foot in the Corleone house again. As for you and the rest of your Marino people — start packing. You're heading back to Sicily to beg, you idiots!"

The line went dead a second time, without ceremony.

The wild joy on Rossana's face froze, then turned a deathly white.

My eyes reddened, and I made a show of looking devastated. Inside, I was as cold as river silt.

I had been married into the Corleone family for three years.

To keep Luca's position in the family stable,

I had pulled more all-nighters than I could count, balancing his books, smoothing things over with the heads of the Five Families, cleaning up the messes that nearly turned into bloodbaths.

Those shipments at the Brooklyn docks, the ones the Feds were watching — I'm the one who arranged for them to be moved overnight.

The witness in Queens, the one about to flip on Luca — my Marino people made him disappear.

And in return, Luca had taken family money and funneled it to Sofia. A penthouse in Manhattan. A private island in the Mediterranean. A yacht docked at Port Monaco.

He'd even said it to my face, with a clear conscience:

"Vera, you're already the *Mrs. Corleone*. Sofia has nothing. What's wrong with me giving her a little compensation?"

And Rossana, back then, had chimed in airily:

"What man doesn't stray? Women in families like ours — we turn a blind eye and let it go. So long as Luca still comes home to the Long Island house, who cares how many he keeps on the side?"

Yes.

Luca Corleone believed his *true love* came before everything.

Family. Code. His dying father. None of it mattered next to his *true love*.

Fine.

Then he could lose all of it — half a century of Corleone empire built across New York. He could lose every bit.