"Dario, what if something happens to me too?"

Gianna curled up against the headboard of the back-room cot, her eyes red-rimmed, her voice thick with tears.

"I'm really scared."

Dario sat at the bedside, holding her hand with absurd care, his voice impossibly gentle.

"Don't let your mind run wild."

"The work's done. You're going to be fine."

But the more he soothed her, the harder she cried.

"But my stomach hurts so much..."

"My head's spinning, I keep feeling sick, my whole body's wrong."

As she spoke, the tears kept falling, one after another. Her free hand drifted up and touched her own collarbone, as if steadying her heart.

"Dario, do you think the Falcone woman did it on purpose?"

"She hates me so much. What if she did something while she had me open on that table..."

For a moment the room went quiet. Even the low hum of the generator behind the wall seemed to hold its breath.

I pushed open the door and walked in.

Gianna's voice cut off mid-sentence.

The instant she saw me, her face paled, and she shrank back into Dario's arms on instinct.

As if I were some monster.

Dario looked up.

The last trace of civility was gone from his eyes.

"Adriana, you're just in time."

"Gianna's been in pain this whole time, dizzy, nauseous."

"What exactly did you do to her on that table?"

I lowered my head and paged through the notes I keep that never see a Fed's eye.

My voice was calm.

"Mild abdominal pain, nausea, and dizziness after the kind of work I did are all normal."

"The anesthetic hasn't fully cleared her system yet, and her body's still recovering from the blood loss. This is to be expected."

"A few days lying low and it'll ease up."

The words had barely left my mouth.

Dario let out a cold laugh.

"Normal?"

"Normal would have her hurting like this?"

"I think you're settling a personal score!"

I looked up at him.

And suddenly explaining felt pointless.

"If you doubt the work, bring it to a sit-down. Have the Don's own cleaner look her over."

"Every cut I made, every stitch, every result. It's all there for anyone with standing to see."

"If it really was my hand at fault, I'll answer for every consequence. To you. To the Family."

Dario laughed, beyond furious.

He shot up from his chair, the metal frame screeching against concrete.

"Answer for it?"

"What could you possibly offer?"

"If something really happens to Gianna, can you afford what that costs?"

The air in the room grew tighter and tighter.

All at once, the exhaustion hit me to the bone.

I hadn't slept the night before.

I'd been on my feet all day, keeping the Family's wounded off the morgue slab, right up to now.

And on top of it, I had to stand here and take baseless accusations from the man my bloodline financed and the outsider woman he'd put in my place.

Body and mind, I was at my limit.

I closed the file.

"Think whatever you want."

"There are other men I have to keep breathing tonight."

"Find a nurse if you need anything."

With that, I turned to leave.

The next second.

A hand seized my arm, hard.

"You stay right there!"

Dario clamped down on me.

The grip was tight enough to crush bone.

I frowned and wrenched my arm free.

And it was right then.

A scream came from the cot.

"Aah—"

Gianna's eyes rolled back, and she dropped straight down, stiff as a board.

"Gianna!"

Dario's face changed in an instant.

He all but threw himself at the bedside.

"Gianna! Wake up!"

"Don't scare me!"

But no matter how he shook her, she didn't respond.

His head snapped toward me.

That look could have devoured someone.

"Adriana!"

"What did you do to her!"

I stood where I was.

It was simply absurd.

"I didn't do anything."

"You're still trying to talk your way out of it!"

Dario crossed the room in a few strides.

He grabbed me by the collar of the coat I wore over blood I'd already washed off twice that day.

His eyes were bloodshot.

"It was you, it had to be!"

"You did something on the sly while you had your hands on her!"

"You poisonous bitch!"

"If Gianna doesn't wake up tonight, there is no corner of this Family that will shield you from me!"

The words landed.

He raised his hand.

And slapped me hard across the face.

"Crack—"

The sharp sound of it exploded through the room.

My head snapped to the side.

Blood welled at the corner of my mouth.

Everyone in the room froze.

Even the nurse who'd just stepped in stood rooted in place, her hand still on the door.

Dario seemed not to have expected he'd actually do it.

He stared at his own palm.

A flicker of panic crossed his eyes.

He wet his lower lip and reached up to straighten a tie that was already straight.

But that flicker lasted only an instant.

It was swiftly buried under rage again.

"You brought this on yourself."

He said it.

As if every wrong here were mine.

As if he weren't the one who'd broken the oath that bound him to my blood.

As if the woman lying on that cot were the real victim.

I lifted my head slowly.

My cheek burned.

But inside I was strangely calm.

So calm there wasn't a single ripple.

So it turned out that when your heart truly dies.

You can't even feel the pain.

I gently pushed him off.

Straightened the rumpled coat.

Then set the crooked pin on my chest straight again.

Through all of it I said nothing.

Then I turned and left.

And never looked back.

Back in the room they let me keep at the edge of the compound.

I sat in the chair, silent for a long time.

The handprint on my face still throbbed faintly.

Outside the window the sun was bright.

But I couldn't feel a trace of its warmth.

After a long while, I took out my phone.

And called a woman I'd come up with, back before the Family bound my name to Dario's.

She handled reckonings now, the kind brought before the Don.

"Draw up the papers for me. The full reckoning. Everything I'm owed back."

There was a pause on the other end.

"You've finally decided?"

I gave a quiet "Mm."

My voice was calmer than even I expected.

"The sooner the better."

After I hung up.

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

Nine years bound to that bloodline.

It had finally come to an end.

My phone suddenly rang.

I thought she'd texted back.

I answered without even glancing at the screen.

Donna Winslow's shrill, grating voice came crashing down on me.

"You shameless, worthless woman!"

There was the click of her tongue against her teeth, twice, before the venom came.

"I must have been blind to ever let your name be tied to the Conti household!"

My hand tightened around the phone.

On the other end she was still screaming her curses.

"It's bad enough you can't give my son a child of your own!"

"And now you won't let anyone else carry one either!"

"How can you be this vicious!"

"Dario told me everything!"

"That girl is carrying the Conti bloodline's child, and you nearly put her in the ground!"

"What ectopic pregnancy?"

"I've lived this long and never even heard of such a thing!"

"You're the one with the knife, surrounded by your own people, who knows if you're behind this whole thing!"

"Let me tell you, Adriana!"

"If anything happens to my grandson, there is no Don, no famiglia, no name that will keep me off you!"

One vicious line after another came pouring through.

I sat there in the quiet room at the edge of the compound.

And suddenly I laughed.

Laughed until my eyes went red.

So even now.

They still believed.

I was the one in the wrong.

"From the day you married into the Conti name, this house hasn't known a single peaceful day!"

On the other end of the line, the Conti matriarch's tongue clicked twice against her teeth before the venom came, shrill enough to split my eardrum.

"And now you won't even spare my grandchild!"

"Adriana, what is wrong with you?"

"I'm telling you, if anything happens to my grandchild, I'll make you pay with your life!"

The angrier she got, the louder she screamed.

As if every fault belonged to me.

And that oath-breaking son of hers had somehow become the innocent victim.

I held the phone and listened in silence.

My chest ached, tight and heavy.

Nine years of marriage.

Nine years of giving.

Nine years bound to a man my bloodline had financed, a crew and a territory floated to him on Falcone tribute money. I'd patched his soldiers in the back-room, kept their bullet wounds off the Fed ledgers, waited on his mother, held the whole household together.

And in the end, in their eyes, I counted for less than the unformed child in Gianna's belly.

When she finally ran out of breath to curse with, I spoke slowly.

"Mom."

My voice was soft.

But it silenced her at once.

"An ectopic pregnancy is usually linked to damage or inflammation in the fallopian tube. In some women, long misuse of birth control raises the risk too."

"My findings come with full records and the surgery's mark on them. It isn't something anyone can just alter."

"If you really want to know the cause."

I paused.

"You should go ask that good son of yours."

With that, I hung up.

Then I dropped the number into the block list.

Quick, clean.

Without a moment's hesitation.

Half an hour later.

The lawyer who'd come up through the bloodline alongside me sent over the reckoning papers.

I printed the file.

Turned through it page by page.

And at the bottom, I signed my name.

Adriana Falcone.

The two words came out calm and certain.

Like a period placed at the end of a nine-year marriage.

Walking toward Gianna's room with the papers in hand, I'd already worked out exactly how I would lay them before Dario.

But the moment I reached the door of the room.

My steps stopped short.

What I saw made me frown.

The corridor outside was packed with people.

A dozen lenses were all trained on the door.

Hired faces, men with cameras, the wrong kind of ears.

They had the whole corridor jammed solid.

Mira Greco and Marco were boxed in at the center.

Their foreheads slick with sweat.

Explaining something, over and over. Marco kept glancing at the Capo before he finished each sentence, waiting for a permission that never came.

And Dario stood in the middle of the crowd.

His face dark.

Like he was waiting for something.

The instant he saw me appear.

His expression changed.

At the same moment.

Every lens swung toward me.

Lights went off in a frenzy.

So sharp I couldn't keep my eyes open.

"Is it true your error left the woman worse off after the work was done?"

"We hear you had a private grudge with her. Did you use your place in the Family to settle it?"

"They're saying on the street your standing was never earned. Is it true?"

"Word is your name as the Family's surgeon came through favors, not skill. How do you explain that?"

Question after question surged in like a tide.

Closing in around me.

I couldn't even take a step forward.

Mira Greco hurried over to hold them back.

"Everyone, calm down!"

"The matter is already being looked into!"

"Don't go spreading what hasn't been proven!"

But no one out there was listening.

And right then.

Dario spoke.

"What's there to look into?"

His voice carried down the whole corridor.

Everyone fell quiet at once.

He slowly raised his hand.

Pointed at me.

His eyes cold.

"Isn't the truth already right in front of us?"

"Adriana used her place in the Family to settle a private grudge, and it brought a serious problem to the table."

"My woman is still fighting for her life."

"We don't even know if she'll make it."

"And yet the one who caused all this walks free, going about her work like nothing happened."

He spoke with righteous fury.

As if he truly were demanding a reckoning for the wronged.

But only I knew.

The victim he kept naming.

Was his outsider woman.

And I.

I was the one who had been betrayed and wronged.

"A woman like this."

Dario stared me down.

"What right does she have to keep her hands in the Family's work?"

"What right does she have to stand here?"

"I demand that Adriana answer for it, right now, before all of you!"

"Answer to Gianna!"

"Answer to every soul she's ever cut into!"

"Admit what she's done!"

A wave of muttering broke out all around.

Every lens fixed on me.

Waiting for me to break down.

Waiting for me to explain.

Waiting, even, for me to drop to my knees.

It suddenly struck me as absurd.

He was the one who broke the oath of our marriage.

He was the one who carried his pregnant outsider into my back-room.

I was the one who saved Gianna's life under crushing pressure.

And now I was the unforgivable one.

I drew a deep breath.

Pushed down the storm rising in my chest.

And lifted my head.

"Dario."

I looked straight into his eyes.

My voice wasn't loud.

But it reached every ear in that corridor, clear.

"What you've done."

"You know better than anyone."

"You broke our vows—"

"Shut your mouth!"

Dario's face changed in a flash. He wet his lower lip, and that half-beat-too-soon thing started in his throat.

The moment I started, he came at me.

No one had time to react.

The next second.

"Crack."

A slap landed hard across my face.

This time.

Harder than yesterday.

Heavier.

It knocked me staggering backward.

A thick taste of blood flooded my mouth.

A tooth loosened and fell out.

Blood ran from the corner of my lips.

The whole place went dead silent.

Even the men with their cameras froze.

No one had expected him to strike me in front of all those eyes.

But Dario was like a man gone mad.

He jabbed a finger at my face and roared.

"Adriana!"

"You say one more lying word and I'll rip your mouth apart!"

His face was twisted, vicious.

Not a trace left of the smooth, well-mannered soldier he'd once played.

Then.

He turned to Mira Greco.

His voice full of threat.

"I want this dealt with today!"

"Or I'll carry it all the way up to the Don himself!"

"I'll make sure every man in this territory knows your house buries its mistakes!"

"I'll drag your name through the mud!"

Mira Greco's face was grim beyond words.

All around him pressed the cameras.

The gathering crowd.

Too many eyes, and somewhere among them the wrong ears, the kind that carried things back to the Feds.

He looked at me.

Then at the lenses still turning around him.

In the end he pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a heavy breath.

As if he'd aged years in a single sigh.

"Adriana."

His voice came out strained.

"For the sake of the Family's honor."

"Until this is settled."

"You'd best step back from your work for now."

When the words landed.

The whole corridor went terrifyingly quiet.

I stood where I was.

My face burning, raw.

But worse than the physical pain.

What chilled me more.

Was the way everyone looked at me in that moment.

Suspicion.

Doubt.

A relish in my downfall.

As if all the lives I'd fought to save over the years.

The wounded men I'd kept off the morgue slab.

The standing I'd earned in blood.

Counted for nothing against a few weightless words of slander.

Protection revoked, pending the Don's word.

Four small words, and yet they were nearly a death sentence for a woman whose hands kept the Family's wounded breathing.

Especially for me, right when my standing was rising.

Years of honor, of soldiers walked back from the edge, of trust earned in blood, all of it would carry a stain now that nothing could wash away.

And even so, Dario still wasn't satisfied.

He let out a cold little laugh.

"That's it?"

"She nearly put a woman in the ground, and all she loses is her place?"

"In your eyes, is a life worth less than the work she does?"

The instant the words left his mouth.

A commotion broke out at the far end of the corridor.

Then a crowd surged in, signs held high, the kind of crowd a man buys by the hour and drives like cattle.

"A life for a life! That's only right!"

"Get this cold-blooded woman out of here!"

"Justice for the girl!"

The shrill chants rose and fell against each other.

The crude red placards were thrust overhead.

The whole back room dissolved into chaos in seconds.

Phones came up. Faces I didn't know pressed in close, the wrong ears in every direction, the kind that carried words straight to the Feds.

Countless lenses swung toward me at once.

The whispers spilled past the doors and into the street.

One ugly name after another, passed hand to hand through the territory.

The cold-blooded surgeon.

The butcher of the Falcone bloodline.

The truth behind the dead.

In the span of a few minutes.

The standing the Family had built over years was dragged into the center of the storm.

Mira Greco's face grew uglier by the second.

Sweat ran down from his temples in a steady line.

In the end.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled, like a man washing his hands.

"Fine."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

His voice came out heavy.

"To put this noise in the street to rest."

"I declare, as of today, Adriana Falcone holds no place within this Family's work."

The whole room erupted.

Even Mira Marchetti's head snapped up.

"Greco."

But the old Capo only waved a tired hand.

No tap of the ring against the table. He said nothing more.

I stood where I was.

A ringing filled my ears.

And then I laughed.

I laughed and laughed, and the tears came down before I could stop them.

Nine years bound in alliance.

More than a decade buried in the work no one else could do.

Countless nights spent with my hands inside men who would have died on Fed slabs.

Operating tables beyond counting.

And in the end.

I'd lost to a smear that had been laid out long before I ever walked through the door.

Dario frowned.

My reaction seemed to have unsettled him.

"What are you laughing at?"

I didn't answer.

I only lifted a hand and slowly wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes.

Then I looked at Greco.

And gave a small nod.

"Fine."

"I accept."

My voice was calmer than even I expected.

Hearing that.

Dario visibly let out a breath.

He wet his lower lip and laughed a half-beat too soon, reaching to straighten a tie that was already straight. As if he'd finally gotten what he wanted.

But the next second.

I pulled a document out of my bag.

The snow-white paper was glaring under the lights.

I unfolded it slowly.

Straight toward every phone.

And straight toward Dario.

The words across the top were plain to see. A reckoning, set before the Don.

The room went suddenly still.

Countless lenses pushed in at once.

Every gaze fell on that paper.

Dario's face changed in a flash.

"Adriana. What do you think you're doing?"

I looked at him.

At this man I'd loved for nine years, given nine years to.

And found, all at once, that I couldn't feel the pain anymore.

Only complete disappointment was left.

I raised the paper in my hand.

And spoke, clear, word by word:

"I accept the Family's judgment."

"And I accept getting on my knees to beg Gianna Russo's forgiveness."

The moment I said it.

The whole room was stunned.

Even the crowd at the door went quiet.

Dario's face went blank with shock.

He clearly hadn't expected me to give in.

I turned the words around.

My gaze locked dead on his face.

"But before that."

"There's something I mean to put before every soul in this room."

I reached up and worked the wedding ring from my finger. I set it down on the steel tray beside me. A single soft click in the silence.

Those who knew me knew what the click meant. It was the last mercy anyone got.

My voice wasn't loud.

Yet it carried down the whole corridor.

"Starting today."

"Dario Conti is no longer my husband."

"The alliance is broken. I'm done with him."

As the words landed.

The entire room fell into a dead silence.

Every lens swung in unison toward Dario.

And the color in his face.

In that instant, drained away completely.