My ex-boyfriend, the Don's heir, was getting married today.

In the grand reception hall, the bride, Elena, moved through the crowd with a champagne flute in hand, toasting the bosses and captains who'd flown in from across the island.

In the dressing room, Luca had me pinned against the gown the bride had just changed out of, fucking me hard.

The mirror gave me back a stranger, hair tangled, not a stitch of clothing left on me, my neck covered in marks he'd left like a signature.

The camera on the side table blinked red.

Three knocks at the door. Luca stood up, straightened the white rose boutonniere on his lapel, picked up the black earpiece from the table and pressed it in.

He tossed it at me without looking.

"One night. Half a million euros. Anna, you're even pricier than I remembered."

I watched his back as he walked out, and picked up the check with shaking hands.

Rosa, don't be scared. Mama's got the money to save you.

I got dressed and dragged my aching body out of the wedding venue.

Passing through the colonnade, I caught a glimpse through the window of the reception hall, the whole spectacle still in full swing.

The floor was marble. The estate had stood since the seventeenth century.

The alliance between two of Sicily's great families had dominated the Palermo headlines since yesterday morning.

The beautiful bride on the arm of the handsome groom, raising glasses to the gathered bosses. They looked like they belonged together.

The Luca who'd once proposed to me with a copper button he'd found at the docks, and that same man had just picked up the ancestral Morello signet ring and slid it onto his real bride's finger.

I'd seen that ring once. When he was nineteen, he'd dug it out of his father's belongings box, held it in his palm, stared at it for a long time, then put it back. He said when he got married, he'd put it on my hand himself.

I touched my ring finger. I could still feel the cold of that old copper button.

I'd let myself dream about marrying Luca once.

No white dress, no family crest ring, no armed men lining the aisle. Just the two of us and a few people who actually mattered.

I tightened my grip on the check in my pocket.

Doesn't matter. I got what I came for.

The cash exchange ran out of a warehouse at the far end of the docks, behind two iron gates, each manned and watching.

I got there just before the broker closed up, practically running.

"Miss Costello, we can't process this check. You'll need to verify it with whoever issued it."

"What? That's impossible."

I stared at the check in my hands. Luca's signature was right there, plain as day.

I pressed both palms flat on the grimy desk and looked the broker dead in the eye.

"Can you try again? Please. I need that money. Just try one more time."

"Miss Costello, we've run it twice. I'm sorry."

"That can't be right. That cannot be right."

His men showed me out. I stumbled and hit the dock's stone pavement hard.

Luca had played me. He never intended to pay a cent.

What he wanted to give me was a lesson in humiliation.

No money. What's going to happen to Rosa...

"Miss Costello..."

I answered the phone on autopilot. The hospital again, calling about the bill.

"I know. I'm working on it. Please, just hold her bed one more day. One day."

I rode my beat-up motorcycle through three checkpoints and back to the estate, needing to look Luca in the face.

Marco, Luca's right-hand man, spotted me at the gate and walked me back to that same dressing room.

The bride swept through on her way out, in a fresh gown, and didn't spare me a glance. I felt it like a slap.

"The check is worthless."

Luca was already there, like he'd known I'd be back. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Anna. You actually thought one night was worth half a million euros? You really think that's what you're worth?"

I balled my fists.

"Your bride is right outside. If I walk out there and tell her what just happened, if I blow up this whole alliance, the Morello family loses a lot more than half a million."

"Threaten me, and you disappear. Anna, who the hell is worth this much trouble? What man has you running around selling yourself like this?"

I didn't answer. He had the wrong idea, and I couldn't correct it, because even if I told him about the child, I couldn't be sure it wouldn't make things worse. He was about to be a married man. I couldn't guarantee his wife, or Luca himself, would tolerate a child's existence. Better to let him keep believing what he believed.

The silence made the vein in Luca's forehead twitch.

"I've got evidence." He picked up the camera and turned it on.

The footage was clear as day. A man and a woman. Both our faces in perfect focus.

He stepped close, his voice low, like a judge reading out a sentence.

"Anna. There are a lot of guests out there. You put that footage on the projector in the main hall, and I'll give you the money. Deal?"

Luca ejected the memory card from the camera and pressed it into my palm, then pointed at the AV console in the reception hall.

"See that? Plug it in. Let it play all the way through. Then you get your money."

My hand shook around the card. The girl I used to be would never have believed any of this was possible.

The hospital calls kept playing in my head like a broken recording. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.

I pushed past Luca and walked toward the console. The event staff shot me confused looks. I plugged the card in.

"Anna. You sure about this?"

Luca's voice cut through from behind me. My finger hovered over the play button, trembling.

I didn't care what happened anymore. I needed his money.

I closed my eyes and pressed it.

The screen didn't show what I expected. Instead it switched to a cheerful wedding march, the Morello and De Luca family crests embroidered across the projection.

Luca looked at me with flat, dark eyes. "You haven't changed at all. You'll do anything for money."

"How did I ever love you? I can barely stand to look at who I used to be."

He'd set me up again.

"Luca, you promised me money."

"Did I?" He held my gaze with something close to contempt. "You promised you'd never leave me."

He'd brought up something five years old. My eyes burned.

"When you left, did you think about this?"

I grabbed his sleeve, trying to hold on. "I had reasons back then—"

"You think I'm still eighteen? That you can fool me again?"

He pulled his arm away without hesitation, like pulling back the last thread of hope I had.

He'd changed. The Luca standing in front of me had fully taken the reins of the Morello family, the undisputed ruler of a sizable piece of Sicily. He wasn't the boy who'd fixed boats with me in Palermo's old harbor anymore.

There was a faint scar on his right hand, running from the base of his thumb all the way to his wrist. I knew which year it was from. I knew why. His watch rested over one end of it, an IWC with a black dial, nothing like the cheap Seiko he'd worn five years ago.

"Don't expect a single euro from me."

The line of his back as he walked away was absolute. His steps fast. Too fast for me to ever catch up.

Marco walked me out. I had no choice but to leave the estate.

I sat on the stone steps outside the iron gate, no way forward and no way back.

I made one call. "Paolo. I need you to help me again."

"Didn't you come in just a couple days ago? Can your body even handle it?"

"I'll be fine."

The clinic was behind a laundromat. You had to walk through a corridor of hanging white sheets to get in. The owner didn't ask names, didn't write receipts; he just drew a line on the chalkboard on the wall. One more. Another one came in.

Inside the black-market clinic, I rolled up my sleeve. The old doctor worked the length of my thin arm until he finally found a vein that would take the needle. Bright red blood ran down the tube and away from my body. The collection bag was already past what it should hold, and the cold was settling into my bones in waves.

Half an hour later I walked out with cash and made it to the hospital before the billing desk closed.

"This isn't enough."

"I know. I'm going to figure something out. Please, just give me two more days."

I'd lost count of how many times I'd had to bow my head these past years. Begging had become second nature.

At the end of the corridor was Rosa's room. I stopped in the doorway for a moment and watched her sleep. I couldn't stay.

I pulled my messenger jacket from the motorcycle's storage box and shrugged it on. I switched on the radio unit and started taking jobs. Luca or no Luca, I wasn't giving up on Rosa.

The jacket had a number printed on the chest, the underground network's ID for each runner. You didn't open the packages. You didn't ask who was receiving them or why. One rule: on time.

In Palermo's shadow economy, there were always packages that couldn't move through official channels after dark. Running them was one of the ways people at the bottom survived. Nobody asked questions.

I wove my motorcycle through the narrow lanes near the docks. A familiar cramp hit my stomach. The lights at night were too bright. Everything was starting to blur.

The screech of brakes hit out of nowhere. I was thrown a long way.

Then nothing.

The ceiling light was blinding. I tried to cover my eyes and the pain in my arm stopped me cold.

"Stop moving. It's broken."

Luca's voice, impatient. Which meant I was in a hospital.

I struggled up from the bed and nearly fell off the edge. Luca caught me.

"My bike, I still have deliveries—"

"Anna. Are you out of your mind?"

I didn't answer. I found my phone and pulled it up. Cracked screen, but I could still see the string of late-delivery alerts. Hopelessness washed over me. I didn't know how much I'd be fined, and I had nothing left to pay with.

I started sending messages one by one, explaining there'd been an accident, that the delay wasn't intentional, asking for some understanding.

He stood by the bed in a navy bespoke suit, completely out of place in a ward without curtains. He'd probably come straight from some post-wedding reception.

Luca snatched my phone. "You know what state you're in and you're still worrying about work?"

"Give it back." I looked at him, red-eyed, furious and refusing to look away. "Mr. Morello, I'm not asking you for money right now. What business is it of yours?"

A brief silence. He let out a short, cold laugh. "So what you're saying is, I'd have to pay to have any say in what you do?"

I didn't have the energy to argue. I still didn't know why he'd shown up here at all.

"Give me back my phone."

He didn't move. "Anna. Let me give you another way to make money."

I didn't know if this was another setup. But the word money made me look up anyway.

"Come stay with me. I'll pay you."

"You're married," I said.

"My memory's fine."

I didn't follow. "You want me as your mistress?"

Luca finally smiled. "Shouldn't be hard for you. After all, you take after your mother."

My fingers pressed into my own palm. My face went white.

He knew exactly where that would land.

Once, when someone had called me the bastard daughter of a kept woman, he'd stepped in front of me and thrown a punch.

Now the punch was his, and it was landing on me.

But Rosa needed me. I had to hold on.

I fought back the tears, my voice barely steady. "How much?"

"What?"

I met his eyes. "If I'm your mistress. How much?"

Luca's jaw tightened, his hand slowly closing into a fist. "Fifty thousand euros a month."

"Fine." I didn't hesitate for a second. "But the money comes first. Given the track record, Mr. Morello."

His chest rose and fell hard. He pulled out his phone, tapped a few times, and threw my phone back to me. The transfer had already cleared.

I let out a slow breath, walked up to him, and started to kneel down.

He caught my hand. "What are you doing?"

I looked up at him, face completely blank. "Being a mistress means taking care of you, doesn't it?"

Something I did enraged him. He grabbed my jaw. "Aren't you full of surprises."

Then he shoved me aside, turned, and walked out. "You think I'd touch you in this state."

The door slammed. I slid down to the floor, covered my eyes, and let the tears go.