My brother was the kind of man who thought himself above the frost and snow. The eldest daughter of the most powerful Don on the Eastern Seaboard, the woman every made man in the territory would kill to marry? He found the whole thing beneath him.

He ran off with a nightclub singer instead.

Me, though? I was the vulgar one.

After I married Rosalia Castellano in my brother's place, I spent every waking hour crunching numbers and chasing profit.

In just one year, the Castellano family's holdings overflowed with gold and jade, its operations spanning the entire territory.

Even the old man who watched the gate at the compound ate meat three times a month.

Rosalia declared before everyone:

"Meeting Angelo Ferraro was the greatest fortune of my life."

Business was booming. Then my brother came back, alone, with nothing but a worn leather bag on his back.

He jabbed a finger at my face:

"A man who reeks of money like you, and you think you deserve to stand beside the Don's daughter?

"You've turned this entire operation into a den of greed! Have you given a single thought to the family's reputation?"

With that, he dropped to his knees before Rosalia:

"My brother is crude and unworthy. He has tarnished the Castellano name! I am willing to take over the household and restore dignity to this family!"

Rosalia looked at my brother's refined, austere face.

Her cheeks flushed.

"Granted."

Severance papers landed on the table.

I became the laughingstock of Kingsport.

I didn't argue. Didn't make a scene. I packed my things and left like I was told.

So why did they all come begging me to come back?

……

When Rosalia Castellano said "Granted,"

I was caught off guard.

I had rolled up my sleeves and poured myself into running her family's operations for an entire year.

She had praised me more than once in front of others.

She said I was the greatest fortune of her life.

And now, after one look at my brother's face,

she was ready to hand him everything?

Emilio slid me a sidelong glance, dripping with contempt.

It was always like this.

He had been a prodigy with words and letters since childhood, groomed to be a consigliere of the highest order.

All I ever knew was arithmetic, the lowly craft of earners.

Every time he dazzled a room with some effortless quotation from Machiavelli or Dante, he would turn and give me that same look. That quiet, cutting dismissal.

I always assumed he would stay up on that pedestal forever.

But now, staring at his threadbare bag,

I wasn't so sure.

The steward's seal passed into his hands.

He straightened his spine and swept an arm toward the carved beams and painted pillars I had built for the compound:

"Rosewood and gilded dragons! This kind of gaudy excess is exactly why the operation has gone to ruin! Tear it all down within three days!

"Replace every piece with marble panels, hand-carved with the Castellano crest, to reflect the dignity befitting a Don's household!"

I swallowed hard.

Swapping everything for marble would cost ten times what the rosewood and gold had.

The house steward winced:

"Sir, we don't have enough in the accounts for that."

"How can the Castellano family not have enough!"

Emilio Ferraro's brows drew together like a blade. He adjusted his glasses with his index and middle finger, that precise, professorial gesture he always made before saying something he believed was brilliant.

"Sir, the treasury has always been managed by the son-in-law. Everything was under his control."

"Ha."

Emilio's expression shifted to one of grim understanding:

"The entire family's wealth was in the hands of someone as base as Angelo? Angelo, you've treated the Don's daughter like she doesn't exist!"

"Guards."

Rosalia's voice was ice:

"Hand over the treasury keys to Emilio Ferraro."

I stared at her.

I had thought this was a passing whim. I hadn't imagined she truly intended to give my brother everything I had built.

The gold and silver I had earned for this family over the past year filled the vault floor to ceiling. Clean cash, laundered revenue, stacked investments. Every dollar accounted for, every pipeline humming.

The moment the vault doors swung open, the blinding glare of gold forced Emilio back two steps.

Something flickered in his eyes.

He smothered it quickly, replacing it with disgust:

"So this is the source of the rot! This is what turned the Castellano operation into a house of vulgar excess!"

He spun around and threw himself to his knees before Rosalia:

"Angelo hoarded all of this for his own indulgence, with no regard for the family's reputation or dignity! What kind of man does that?"

He was trembling with righteous fury.

That ethereal face of his, all sharp angles and cool detachment.

Like some exiled immortal descended from the heavens.

Rosalia couldn't look away.

"From this day forward, everything in this estate falls under your authority."

Rosalia helped Emilio to his feet with her own hands.

"The money, the staff, the land, and every business venture. All of it goes to Emilio."

Everything I had built.

One sentence from the Don's eldest daughter, and it all belonged to Emilio Ferraro.

I dropped to my knees.

"I'm asking for a severance. A clean dissolution."

Rosalia stiffened.

She was about to speak, but Emilio tugged gently at her sleeve.

"If my brother stays any longer, he'll only taint the dignity of your household. Better to grant him what he asks."

Rosalia swallowed whatever she'd been about to say.

"Granted."

When I walked out of the Castellano compound with the dissolution papers in hand, the men loitering outside the social club on the corner all stopped to stare.

Some speculated about what I'd done wrong.

Others said I deserved it.

That my head was full of nothing but money, nothing like my brother and his lofty principles.

I ignored every last one of them.

The truth was, marrying into the Castellano family had never been entirely about honoring my brother's arrangement.

As the Don's eldest daughter, Rosalia could secure a Commission-backed franchise with almost no effort.

With that franchise, I could move shipments as far as the European ports and no one would interfere.

Now that Rosalia had cast me aside, the franchise was gone with her.

My gaze drifted toward another estate on the west side of Kingsport.

The younger Castellano daughter. Rosalia's sister.

In truth, she was the one I'd been meant to marry in the first place.

My brother and I had each been matched to one of the two Castellano daughters.

But Emilio ran off on his own, and to save face with Rosalia, who held the greater standing within the family, the Ferraros had no choice but to send me in his place.

In the year since, Elena Castellano had remained unmarried.

The door opened, and I looked at her.

"Elena. The old arrangement between our families. Does it still stand?"

I had prepared myself.

If she refused,

I would bow and leave without another word.

After all, it was the Ferraro family that had slighted her first.

Elena studied me for a long time.

"It stands."

On the first day of our marriage, I secured the franchise.

To repay Elena's trust, I threw myself into the work with even more drive than I'd had at the Castellano compound.

She told me that every cent the operation earned would be recorded under my name.

"Could it be that you actually like me?"

I was genuinely curious.

She only smiled and said nothing.

Elena was a daughter who had never been favored by the inner circle.

But I would make sure every woman in Kingsport envied mine.

Before long, Elena's estate, once half in ruins, had a brand-new two-story wing rising above its walls. The front gate had a proper guard rotation. The driveway held three new cars where before there had been one.

Things at the Castellano compound, however, had taken a different turn.

Emilio declared that the stench of commerce would no longer be allowed to corrupt anyone's spirit.

Every associate's monthly cut was slashed to almost nothing.

Only without the temptation of money, he reasoned, could people stop obsessing over profit.

Only then could they preserve their noble integrity.

My portrait was even turned into a cautionary display.

The entire household was made to remember how vulgar and base life had been when I was in charge.

The compound was renovated from top to bottom.

Oil paintings and leather-bound volumes lined every wall and corridor. Marble replaced linoleum. A courtyard fountain appeared where the loading dock had been.

The place looked like something out of an architectural magazine.

You could smell the fresh-cut flowers from halfway down the block.

Visitors marveled: "Emilio Ferraro truly is remarkable. Look how refined he's made the Castellano estate."

Even Don Vittorio heard about it and brought Katarina for a personal tour.

But nobody seemed to realize

that all this elegance

had been bought with the fortune I'd built for the Castellano operation.

It wasn't long before the operation ground to a halt.

A crowd gathered at the compound gates.

They were demanding their back pay.

Emilio had burned through nearly every cent in the treasury on his little vanity project.

And even if there had been money left, it wouldn't have mattered. Emilio had already decreed: one copper coin per person, per month.

Enough to kill any illusion that work here would ever pay.

The household guards didn't truly try to stop the crowd.

After all, with no wages of their own, they could barely feed themselves.

Emilio's voice cracked with fury:

"Is money all you people care about?!"

Someone pointed at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist:

"That watch alone could cover every last one of our back wages! What right do you have to lecture us?!"

"Pay us! Yeah! Pay us what we're owed!"

The crowd surged forward. Emilio's face went white.

"These ungrateful wretches! That bastard Angelo must have spoiled them rotten!"

"Rush him! Strip the clothes off his back and sell them for what we're owed!"

"Go!"

"You wouldn't dare!"

Emilio staggered as hands grabbed at him from every direction, barely keeping his footing.

"Orders from the Don!"

A column of Castellano soldiers marched through the compound gates, hauling chest after chest of gifts from the main estate.

It turned out that Don Vittorio had visited Rosalia's compound recently and taken a great liking to Emilio's renovations.

These were his rewards.

Emilio sank to his knees, trembling:

"I humbly thank the Don for this generous tribute!"

The workers who had been seconds from rioting dropped to their knees as well, faces drained of color.

None of them had expected this.

The Don himself was backing Emilio.

Emilio reached into one of the chests and pulled out a thick roll of hundreds at random.

He tossed it at their feet:

"Take it. That's enough to cover several months of your wages.

"And if you don't get back to work and end up disrupting the compound's operations, don't be surprised when you end up in the ground!"

They had their money.

And the Don had made his position clear.

Everyone scrambled to bow their thanks and scattered.

Emilio surveyed the chests of gifts filling the courtyard.

A cold smile spread across his face:

"Just as I thought. My approach was right all along.

"If that bastard Angelo hadn't thrown so much money at these ungrateful wretches before, they'd never have developed such an insatiable greed."

His handmaid kneaded his shoulders. "The Don himself admires your integrity, signore.

"The Ferraro family has always been a house of consiglieri. That Angelo is a disgrace to the family name!"

Emilio adjusted his glasses with two fingers, the gesture slow, almost professorial:

"Starting today, one copper coin per month becomes one copper coin every two months."

The handmaid froze.

Emilio's voice was ice. "Angelo spoiled these workers. I'll train it out of them."

It didn't take long. Within weeks, even more workers walked off the job.

Emilio, furious, dragged several of them before the Castellano family's enforcer captain.

He charged them with willful negligence, inciting unrest, and disrupting the family's business.

But even with men thrown in lockup, the rest still refused to lift a finger.

My side of things was a different story entirely.

Business grew by the day, profits climbing steadily, and I paid the highest wages in all of Kingsport.

The people working for me were terrified of not doing enough.

Emilio seemed to think he'd found the root of the problem.

I was directing my crew to hang the sign above our new front on Mulberry Street when Emilio's men shoved their way forward.

One of them swung and knocked the signboard clean off its hooks.

It hit the ground and split in two.

The leader glanced at the gold bracelet on my temp worker's wrist and sneered:

"So it's true. You're the one corrupting people's hearts with money."

I stared at the shattered signboard. My voice was flat:

"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

"Take your people and get lost! Stop spreading this filth! It's because of money-poisoned vermin like you that everyone's heads are full of nothing but profit!

"You call yourself a Ferraro? Our family is a house of consiglieri! And you drag our name through the mud like this!"

I said nothing.

I just looked past him at the men he'd brought along.

My temp workers could afford gold bracelets.

His men's suits hung off them like they hadn't eaten a full meal in weeks.