Gianna Moretti POV

The underground parking garage was damp and cold, the sound of the downpour above echoing off the concrete ramps.

I stood in the shadow of a concrete pillar, drawing my coat around me.

A few yards away, Julian held Siena in his arms. She was sobbing into his chest, her expensive red dress soaked and clinging to her body in the damp air.

"He didn't even look at me," Siena cried, her voice cracking. "He looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive."

Julian stroked her hair. His profile was hard-a stranger to the soft-featured boy I had known in college.

"I told you to be patient," Julian whispered to her. "I'm trying to get you out too. You're not supposed to be in this world, Siena. I never wanted this for you."

My stomach turned. Get you out too. So he was trying to save her. Trying to save me. Trying to be everyone's savior in a world that devoured saviors.

The damp air filled my lungs, a chill that settled deep in my bones.

I turned and walked toward the exit, stepping out into the deluge. The secure mafia district was a ghost town. The rain pasted the thin fabric of my dress to my skin in seconds. I walked through the deserted streets, my mind a blank slate, until the heavy tires of an armored SUV sliced through a puddle beside me, splashing grimy water across the sidewalk.

The passenger door swung open. Julian leaned over from the driver's seat.

"Get in, Gianna," he ordered. "You'll catch your death."

I did not argue. I was too tired for resistance. I climbed into the leather seat and slammed the heavy door shut, the sound sealing us in a sudden, profound silence.

Julian reached into the back seat, grabbed a dark grey blanket, and tossed it onto my lap.

I looked down at the fabric-a custom cashmere blend. My eye caught a small, discreet logo stitched into one corner, and I recognized it. Lorenzo had purchased this exact blanket for Siena three months ago. It must have been left in Julian's car during one of their clandestine meetings, a glaring piece of evidence he hadn't even noticed.

My hands started to shake. The twisted, sick connections of this life were slowly suffocating me.

"So," I said, my voice barely a whisper over the sound of the rain drumming on the roof. "When did you come back to New York? And when did you start trying to protect my husband's mistress?"

Julian's shoe scraped hard against the brake pedal. The heavy SUV jerked to a stop, and the cabin fell into a sudden, suffocating quiet, broken only by the rhythmic scrape of the wipers on the windscreen.

He turned his head toward me, his eyes wide with a flash of panic.

"I am not sleeping with her," Julian said quickly. "Gianna, you don't understand. It's not what you think."

"Stop talking," I cut him off, at last turning my head to meet his gaze. "My two-year war with Lorenzo wasn't because I wanted to hold onto a man who cheated on me. It was because I wanted to punish Siena for thinking she could break the rules of this life and get away with it."

Julian swallowed hard, his knuckles showing white where his hands gripped the steering wheel.

"I know who she is to you, Julian," I said, my voice completely empty. "I saw the forged syndicate documents. I know you share a father. I know she is your illegitimate half-sister."

The words hung in the air between us. The blood drained from Julian's face, leaving the skin taut and pale over his cheekbones.

"She was a pawn," I continued, staring out at the rain washing down the windshield. "Lorenzo knew exactly who she was. He didn't choose her by accident. He chose her because she was connected to you-to my past. His infidelity wasn't a lapse in his obsession for me. It was his sick, twisted jealousy. He used her to punish me for a history he couldn't control."

I grabbed the door handle and pushed it open. The cold wind and rain blasted into the warm cabin.

"We are done, Julian," I said. "My accountant will wire your laundering fee tomorrow morning."

I stepped one foot out into the rain.

Julian lunged across the center console, grabbing my wrist. His grip was painfully tight.

"Gianna, wait," he demanded. "You cut me off years ago. You walked away from me without a single tear. Why? Why did you really leave me?"

I ripped my hand out of his grasp, my skin stinging where his fingers had been.

"If you have a confession to make, take it to the Famiglia priest," I told him coldly. "Keep the lie. Tell everyone you left me."

Julian seized my shoulders, his voice dropping to a desperate, terrified whisper against the storm outside.

"I tried to save her," he confessed. "Siena. She got involved with Lorenzo on her own-she was young and stupid and wanted the glamour of the mafia life. By the time I found out, she was already in too deep. I stayed close to try to get her out. And when I saw what he was doing to you... I thought I could save you both."

I stopped. The rain ran in cold rivulets down my face as I looked back at him, a figure framed in the warm, dry interior of the vehicle.

"Did she know she was being used?" I asked, my voice cutting through the sound of the rain. "Did your sister actually fall in love with the man you're trying to pull her away from?"

Julian did not answer. He just stared at me, his jaw trembling. His silence was the loudest confession I had ever heard.

I let out a bitter laugh, wiping the rain from my eyes.

"You're a fool, Julian," I warned him softly. "Even if Lorenzo is free, a pawn like Siena will never survive the Boss's approval to marry a Capo. And even if you pull her out, she may not want to be saved."

I slammed the heavy door and walked away into the dark, rain-swept street, leaving the armored car and the man inside it behind me.

Gianna Moretti POV

The security on my penthouse was designed to repel a siege. It took Lorenzo less than three minutes to breach it.

I lay in bed, swallowed by the pitch-black of the room. I had been staring at the ceiling, mourning the boy Julian used to be before the rot of the syndicate had infected him. I had shed a single tear for the quiet, civilian life we could have shared.

The bedroom door splintered open, the sound of its frame cracking echoing in the dark.

Lorenzo stumbled over the threshold. The acrid stench of expensive bourbon and the metallic tang of fresh blood hit my senses immediately.

He dragged himself to the side of my bed and collapsed onto his knees. The most terrifying Capo in New York dropped his heavy head against my mattress, his massive shoulders shaking in the dark.

"Gianna," he whispered, his voice a fractured rasp. "Gianna, please. The child. I am sorry about the child."

My chest seized. A sharp, physical pain shot through my ribs as the memory resurfaced.

Not Siena's fabricated stunt. He knew. Somehow, after all this time, he had found out about the pregnancy I lost.

"Marco-my medic-he told me tonight," Lorenzo said, his voice breaking. "He said there was a miscarriage. Two years ago. After that night we fought. I didn't know you were pregnant. You never told me. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it wouldn't have changed anything," I said, my voice cold and flat. "You would have found another way to punish me for not loving you the way you wanted."

Lorenzo lifted his head to look at me. His eyes were webbed with red veins, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion.

"I don't know how to love you without breaking things," Lorenzo confessed, reaching out to grasp my hand. His fingers were rough, calloused, but his grip was strangely gentle, as if he was afraid of crushing something fragile. "I tried to make you care. I thought if I made you jealous enough, angry enough, you would finally look at me. Fight for us. But all I did was push you further away."

I coldly pulled my hand from his grip and sat up against the headboard.

"Siena was never anything to me," Lorenzo said, his voice raw, scraped clean of its usual arrogance. "She was a mirror. A tool I held up to make you see me. But you never did."

"What about her new pregnancy?" I asked, my voice completely flat.

Lorenzo's expression hardened into a mask of unforgiving stone.

"There is no pregnancy," Lorenzo said. "There never was-not the first time, not now. She's been lying to keep me tethered."

A sharp gasp came from the doorway.

Siena stood there, mascara making black rivulets down her pale cheeks. She must have slipped through the security gate Lorenzo had left broken in his wake.

"You used me!" Siena screamed at him, stepping into the room with violently shaking hands. "For three years, you used me as a shield! You let the entire city call me a whore just to make her jealous!"

Lorenzo stood up with a slow, deliberate grace. He turned his dead, empty Capo eyes upon her.

"I knew who you were from the beginning," Lorenzo said coldly. "I knew you were a rat trying to infiltrate my world. You were convenient. A pawn I could use until I figured out what to do with you."

A wave of bile rose in my throat. The suffocating sickness of their world was too much to bear.

"Take your violence out of my house," I commanded them both, pulling the heavy duvet up to my chest. I was unbelievably tired.

Lorenzo ignored me. He took a slow, menacing step toward Siena.

"I will never break my vows to my wife," Lorenzo declared. Reaching into his tailored jacket, he withdrew a thick envelope of cash and tossed it at Siena's feet. "Take the money. Disappear. This is your last chance."

Siena stared down at the stacks of bills, then back up at the man who had ruined her. In that fraction of a second, something inside her fractured.

She let out a guttural sound that was barely human-a shriek of pure madness. Instead of attacking the man who had broken her, she pivoted, aiming her rage directly at me.

"You!" Siena shrieked, her face contorted. "You hold the crown and you don't even want it! I would kill for someone to look at me the way he looks at you!"

She collapsed to her knees in a show of utter brokenness, but in one terrifying, fluid motion, she lunged toward the bed. A stiletto blade appeared in her hand, its silver edge catching the dim light. Lorenzo moved, his own hand closing on empty air an instant too late as Siena drove the six inches of steel into my side.

A sharp, clean fire tore through my side. The breath went out of my lungs and I fell back against the mattress, watching as a dark bloom of crimson spread across the white sheets.

Siena dropped the knife and stumbled backward, staring at her crimson-stained hands. Her face crumpled-not with satisfaction, but with horror at what she had become.

"I just wanted someone to love me," she whispered, her voice small and broken. "That's all I wanted. Someone to choose me."

With a roar, Lorenzo was on her, and the sound of bone giving way echoed in the sudden quiet.

My vision started to blur, the edges of the room bleeding into black. As my heavy eyelids fluttered shut, the last thing I heard was the frantic thud of heavy footsteps sprinting down the hall, and Julian's desperate voice screaming my name.