On the day of my Recognition, I wore the late first wife's white dress by mistake.

The husband who had stood beside me for ten years regarded me with flat indifference. "A poor imitation. Unfit for the title."

The ceremony ground to a halt. The princess I had raised for a decade turned on me with open disgust:

"I knew it! You've been trying to take my mother's place all along! I will never let a scheming woman like you get what she wants!"

She hurled the sachet I had spent half a year stitching — lavender and rosemary, every thread placed by hand — into the fireplace, then beat her small fists against my body.

A child's blows carried little force. But they shattered my heart completely.

I looked at her and spoke, word by word:

"What I wanted was never to replace anyone, and certainly never to become La Donna."

…

The sun blazed overhead, but no amount of light could melt the prejudice frozen in their hearts.

The white dress, discarded to one side, seemed to mock my carelessness and my stupidity. Isabelle's relic. I had touched it, and the household would never let me forget.

I paid no attention to the prying stares and whispered ridicule around me. All I wanted was to leave this place as quickly as I could. The capos' wives watched from the terrace with their espresso cups held just so, their silence louder than any accusation. Somewhere behind me, a bodyguard shifted his weight and said nothing.

But Eloise Valdori seized my arm. "You say you never wanted to be La Donna. Then why didn't you refuse when I brought you Mother's dress?"

"You say you never wanted to replace her. Then why were you so happy when Father agreed to give you the Recognition?"

"You promised I'd be your only child. So why did you give birth to Rosalind!"

Eloise's eyes were rimmed red, brimming with what looked like a thousand grievances. Her left hand drifted to the inside of her wrist, pressing there without knowing it.

But I did not step forward and gather her into my arms the way I always had. I simply looked at her, expression blank, and said nothing.

My unblinking gaze made her flinch. Her eyes darted sideways.

She tried to hold her ground, lips trembling around the words: "Why are you staring at me? Why won't you explain yourself? The Recognition didn't go through. You must be furious!"

My voice came out flat. "Eloise, since this is what you wanted to see, then consider it done."

Three days ago, the dress that had been prepared for the ceremony by the household staff had been stained with paint by Eloise during one of her drawing sessions. The pigment would not wash out.

I had been about to request a replacement, but Eloise dropped the hostility she usually wore around me and came to me with a bright smile, offering an apology.

She even produced an exquisite gown of her own.

It looked slightly worn, but anyone could see it had been meticulously preserved. The silk still held the faintest trace of a perfume that was not mine, not anyone's who still lived in this house.

Something felt wrong. I sent my handmaid to look into it.

The gown turned out to be the white dress Isabelle Valdori had worn at her own Recognition — the day she was presented to the allied families as the Don's wife. It had been kept in a cedar-lined wardrobe in the east wing, wrapped in acid-free tissue, tended by Margherita Solano herself as though it were a sacrament.

Knowing it was a line I could not cross, I tried to make Eloise take it back.

But she burst into tears, sobbing that she had cared for me as her true mother after ten years together, and that was the only reason she wanted me to wear Isabelle's dress.

Then she demanded to know whether I looked down on it simply because it had been made for an alliance bride's rank, not La Donna's.

Those words happened to reach Cassius Valdori as he walked through the door. His gaze darkened, and he told me in a low voice to honor the child's wishes. He even remarked that I had worked hard, caring for Eloise day after day for ten years. His thumb rested on his wedding band — Isabelle's ring — and did not move.

That evening, Cassius and Eloise dined together with me in the main dining room. He even agreed to bring Rosalind back from the upstate property where she had been raised.

I was overwhelmed. I believed that years of devotion had finally earned me a place in their hearts.

But the cold contempt Cassius and Eloise had just shown me tore that delusion to shreds.

I should have known long ago. Warm your hands against ice and all you get is water. You can't hold it, and you can't make it stay.

I gently pried Eloise's fingers from my arm.

"You were afraid I'd rise to the rank of La Donna. Now my Recognition has been halted for the offense of wearing the late wife's dress. Nothing like this has ever happened in this Family's history. From this day forward, I will be ridiculed and suspected by everyone. You've already gotten what you wanted. What more could you possibly be unsatisfied with?"

Eloise bristled like a cornered lion cub, teeth clenched, voice rising to a snarl. "I'm not satisfied! Not even close! Unless you go to the Don yourself and ask to be sent to the Gate House, you're just saying all this to trick me into feeling sorry for you!"

My gaze settled on her face. That small, childish face, barely bigger than my palm, was written over with nothing but fury aimed at me.

I was about to speak when I looked up and saw Cassius standing behind Eloise.

Those cold, imperious eyes, unchanged in ten years. Not by a fraction.

When I didn't respond, Eloise ground her teeth and snapped:

"I knew it! You've been playing hard to get this whole time! You say you don't want anything, you don't compete for anything, but the second I tell you to go to the Gate House, you won't do it! Liar!"

"Eloise."

Cassius said her name, just once, and every sharp edge on her smoothed out in an instant. She burrowed into his arms, small and pitiful.

The room had gone still the moment he appeared. Two bodyguards flanked the doorway behind him, but they might as well have been furniture. When the Don entered a room, the air itself deferred.

Even though I had given Cassius a daughter five years ago, Eloise was still the only child who existed in his eyes.

He'd even sent my baby away the day after I gave birth, afraid that having my own child would make me less devoted to Eloise. A baby I had nearly died delivering. Handed off to distant relatives at the Family's upstate property before my stitches had closed, carried out of the house in the arms of a woman I'd never seen before while I screamed into a pillow that Margherita Solano held against my face.

The agony of labor was nothing compared to the pain of being separated from my daughter.

But for the honor of my family, for my parents and brother running Marconi operations along the coast, I had pulled myself together and gone back to pleasing this father and daughter. The alliance had to hold. The Marconi name depended on my silence, my compliance, my perfect performance as the Don's wife in everything but standing.

Ten years, though.

I was done.

For the first time, I did not lower my eyes or greet Cassius with the deference the household expected. I looked him straight in the face.

"I've dishonored Isabelle's memory and failed in my care of Eloise. I'm requesting the Gate House."

My right hand drifted to the silver reliquary at my throat. The metal was warm from my skin. I held it there, steady, while his gaze tracked the gesture.

Cassius walked toward me, slow and deliberate. Those deep-set eyes betrayed nothing. His wedding band caught the light as his thumb found its edge and began the slow rotation that everyone in the household had learned to fear.

"Are you throwing a tantrum?"

"But you did dishonor Isabelle today."

I lowered myself to one knee and bowed my head. In this house, before this man, it was the old way. "The fault is mine. I'm asking you to send me to the Gate House."

I had said I, not your wife. Not even Angelica Valdori. Just the bare pronoun, stripped of any claim to his name. The same way I'd spoken ten years ago, before the alliance, before any of this began.

Cassius's brow furrowed tight.

"Eloise spoke out of anger. Why must you hold it against her? Besides, she can't do without you."

"Apologize to her nicely, right now, and I'll pretend I never heard any of this."

He assumed I would do what I had always done: lower my head and beg their forgiveness. The Don's word delivered like a verdict, and the room waited for me to comply the way every room always waited.

I didn't move.

Eloise, tired of waiting for her apology, balled her fists and charged at me, pounding blow after blow against my body.

"You're the one who wants to take my mother's place! Why won't you apologize to me!"

"You promised you'd never have children of your own besides me! You lied! You're the one who wronged me!"

Her fists struck the exact spot where I'd been injured half a month ago, saving her when she fell from a horse on the estate grounds. Pain tore through me so fast my face contorted.

Cassius only looked annoyed. "She's a ten-year-old girl. How hard can she possibly hit?"

Then the blood began seeping through my shoulder, staining the fabric dark.

Only then did his expression shift. He reached out and caught Eloise's arm. The rotation of his ring stopped.

Eloise stared at the spreading red, startled, but she still lifted her chin in defiance.

"You were already hurt. Don't you dare blame me for that!"

I looked at Eloise with a bitter half-smile. "The girl is absolutely right."

I had no desire to argue with a child. All I wanted now was to get away from this father and daughter as fast as I could.

I had promised Cassius I would never bear a child of my own. Every time I was called to his room, I took the contraceptive the household physician provided without fail. Obedient. Controlled. A wife in name who existed to serve someone else's daughter and warm someone else's bed and never, ever produce a complication.

But five years ago, Cassius had been drugged at a sit-down that went wrong. That night he was relentless, and I couldn't escape him.

I didn't wake until the following evening. I took the dose immediately.

Two weeks later, the routine check still came back pregnant.

Cassius said nothing at the time, but his brow stayed knotted, and it didn't ease.

The coast was in crisis then. Marconi operations were bleeding money and men. Morale among the crews had collapsed.

Cassius, still seething, had been withholding shipments and supply lines that the Marconi family depended on to hold their territory. To rally the crews, to give my parents and Tristan something to hold on to, I had no choice.

I let word of the pregnancy spread.

Cassius had no sons. For a dynasty built on blood and succession, there was no greater vulnerability.

So when news broke that I was carrying the Don's child, every allied family on the Eastern Seaboard believed the Valdori line finally had an heir.

Morale had never been higher.

My father and brother had crushed the rival families that had bled our territory for years, even taking their underboss alive.

From that moment on, the two of them saw me as a woman of calculating ambition.

Even when the child I bore turned out to be only a girl, she was sent away from the compound the very next day.

The memory of that tiny face, glimpsed for barely a second, sent a dull ache through my chest.

I had done what I knew I shouldn't have. I had wanted too much.

I met Cassius's dark, unreadable gaze and spoke with all the sincerity I possessed:

"If you still hold any regard for what we were, and you can't bring yourself to send me to the Gate House, then let me leave the estate. Let me go to Rosalind. Tell the Family I left of my own will, to light candles and pray for the Valdori name."

A crease of anger had already settled between Cassius's brows:

"I've already shown you more kindness than you deserve. I even sent for Rosalind to be brought to the estate. What more do you want?"

"Even if Eloise went too far today, you raised her for ten years. That she turned out this way is your failure. What right do you have to be dissatisfied?"

My voice remained steady, earnest:

"I have no dissatisfaction. I only ask for your grace."

Cassius was silent for a long moment before his voice turned cold:

"No wife has ever left this compound. Since you've begged to be thrown into the Gate House, I'll grant your wish."

His tone shifted: "If you regret it, I can still revoke the order. The word hasn't gone out to the rest of the household yet."

I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and bowed my head. "I thank you for your grace."

"Angelica."

Cassius ground out my name through clenched teeth, then turned and swept from the room. Two bodyguards fell into step behind him without a sound.

The Gate House was bleak and desolate, yet I felt lighter than I had in years.

If I hadn't come here, Eloise would only have grown more furious seeing me close to Rosalind.

She didn't love me, but she was fiercely possessive of me.

To embroider the perfect blessing charm for her, I had stitched a hundred and seventy-seven before she finally picked the one she liked.

The rest she burned in a single fire.

At the time, Eloise had said:

"I know you wanted to save one for Rosalind. But she doesn't deserve to have the same things as me."

Her smile was innocent. Her eyes were as cold and deep as her father's.

A plate of stale bread and half-raw greens was set before me.

The woman who brought it looked vaguely familiar. She smiled and said:

"You're no alliance bride now. You should count yourself lucky to get even this."

"If you hadn't served the Don all those years, you probably wouldn't get anything at all."

When I gave no reaction, she let out a theatrical sigh:

"Really, all you'd have to do is bow your head to the Don, and you could have any meal you wanted. You were a Marconi. You grew up with silver on the table. Why ruin yourself over a moment of stubbornness?"

Behind the crumbling door, a sliver of charcoal wool peeked into view. The edge of a hand-tailored suit.

I understood. This was Cassius's way of offering me a way out.

He had always used other people's mouths to remind me that I was nothing without him.

And I had always followed meekly behind him and his daughter, without a word of complaint.

Ten years of being hollow. I was done.

I fixed my gaze on that sliver of dark fabric and spoke:

"No feast in the world compares to this simple meal. These days in the Gate House have given me more peace than I ever knew before."

Here, I didn't need to please anyone. I didn't need to carry the weight of my family's honor.

And no one stood over me every waking moment to remind me I was a replacement, a cuckoo in another woman's nest.

The door slammed shut. The flash of wool vanished.

I had no interest in chasing after him. I turned back to my meal.

But a small figure came darting out from behind the door.

She had her hair tied in two little buns, and the moment she saw me, she called out for her mother, over and over.

We had never met before. Yet I knew her at a single glance. This was my flesh and blood, separated from me for five long years.