All I did was reach for a pastry Lila had her eye on, and my childhood sweetheart Luca, the Don's heir of Galvani family, had me thrown in the estate cellar for three days and three nights.

His voice was as cold. "I've told you before, Lila is like a sister to me. Why can't you just let her be?"

This time I didn't cry or beg. I just looked at him.

I had been half out of my mind over this man for more than a decade. I had even slashed my own wrist in front of his father, just to force him into marrying me.

Luca looked at me like he was disappointed all over again. "With a temper like yours, how could you ever be the Donna of Galvani family?"

"Get down to the cellar and think about what you've done. Come back when you've come to your senses."

Then, as if he couldn't quite help himself, he dropped his voice:

"Look, as long as you come around and stop making Lila's life difficult, everything goes back to how it was. Okay?"

I clenched my jaw. It felt like a blade pressed against my chest. "Okay," I said.

Next month, the Don of the Ferrara family will marry me as his Donna.

This time, I am done with Luca.

I was still holding the half-eaten almond cream roll, not sure what to do with my hands.

Luca had stepped in front of Lila, shielding her, his eyes cutting into me like a drawn knife.

"I've told you, Lila is like a sister to me. Why do you keep coming at her like this?"

"She can't even have a pastry without you taking it from her. What kind of person does something like that?"

Lila was crying behind him, big theatrical tears, but she still managed to put in a good word for me:

"It's all my fault. Sofia has loved Luca since they were children. Seeing him care for me must be hard, and anyone would feel the same."

"I just ask that once Sofia becomes the Galvani Donna next month, she'll be kind to everyone on the estate. If she's angry, she can take it out on me."

Luca shook his head with that familiar look of disappointment. "With a personality like that, how could she possibly run this family?"

My throat tightened. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

I had bled for that position. I had begged for it on my knees, literally.

I had been in love with Luca since I was a child — more than a decade of it.

Back then I was still the legitimate daughter of the Caldwell family, and everyone on the island knew Sofia Caldwell.

When I was eight, my mother took a bullet meant for the Don of the Ferrara family and died not long after.

The Ferraras came to the estate soon afterward. They said they were bringing me to live with the Don's children.

There were many children at the estate; besides the Don’s heir Donato, there were heirs from other Mafia families allied with the Ferrara family.

I had no one at that estate. The days were hard. The Don's children bossed me around constantly, and I kept my head down so as not to cause trouble for my father.

The only one who ever stepped in for me was Luca, the heir to the Galvani family. He would slip me little things on the side: a slingshot, a pencil he'd sharpened himself, shells he'd picked up at the docks.

I fell for him gradually, without even noticing it.

Until I turned sixteen and my father got permission to bring me home. He wanted to arrange a match for me.

I cried every day. When Luca found out, he climbed through the window one night and said he wanted to run away with me, go deep into the Sicilian interior, somewhere no one would ever find us.

I still remember how he sounded — soft, certain of himself.

"I swear on the family blood: Luca Galvani will be good to Sofia Caldwell for the rest of his life. One woman. Until death."

I thought I'd found a love like something out of a story.

For two months in the Catania hills, we ran a little bakery together. The days were quiet and warm.

Then, a month before our wedding, Lila showed up.

"Sofia, after you disappeared, Father thought I helped you escape. He threw me out."

"Please don't send me away. I have nowhere to go. Think of me as a stray cat you're taking in."

She was on her knees in front of me, clutching my sleeve, her beautiful face streaked with tears.

We had never been close — she was illegitimate, a half-sister at best — but she was still a Caldwell by blood.

I looked at Luca, torn. "Maybe let Lila stay? She's always been easy. She won't cause trouble."

But I noticed he was already staring at her, a slight frown on his face.

Lila glanced back at him, cautious and uncertain. She gripped my sleeve tighter, tears in her eyes.

"If both of you turn me away, then there's nothing left for me. I'd rather be dead."

She made a move toward the heavy wooden beam in the front room.

Luca's hand shot out and caught her arm. Then, slowly, like he was reconsidering something, he let go.

"You can stay," he said, a rare edge of impatience in his voice.

My mind snapped back to the present.

Luca was rubbing Lila's back, patient and coaxing. There was a time when that kind of gentleness was only ever for me.

He turned to look at me, jaw tight, eyes hard.

"Sofia. You've completely lost it."

I almost laughed. The bitterness rose slowly and settled at the corner of my mouth.

Lila bit her lip and looked at Luca, just once — shy, red-eyed — then started in:

"It's my fault. I'm the reason things went wrong between the two of you. I'll leave today. I won't bother you anymore."

She pulled herself free from Luca's arm and started toward the door.

She made it two steps before he pulled her back.

"And go where, exactly?" he said, low and sharp. "The roads around here are rough. You run into the wrong people out there and they won't stop to ask questions."

It was meant to scare her, and it did. She shrank back like a startled bird.

I stood there watching the two of them wrapped up in each other and felt like I was the one who didn't belong.

I let out a short, quiet laugh and turned to leave.

Then Lila came crawling toward me on her knees and grabbed my wrist.

"Please don't be angry at me anymore."

The pull on my wrist was sharp enough that the pastry flew out of my hand.

"Ah!" She screamed and went down, clutching herself like she was dying.

Luca crossed the room in three strides, shoved me out of the way, and pulled her into his arms to check her over.

The shove sent me stumbling backward. I caught my hip on the edge of the stone table, and the pain hit hard — a deep, wrenching kind I knew well.

I had a serious old injury in my lower back.

Years ago, during a hunting trip with the Ferrara boys in the hill country, Luca had decided for some reason to push his horse at full gallop down a steep slope. He never could ride, even as a kid. The horse panicked and threw him toward the edge of a cliff.

I went after him. In the chaos he grabbed onto me and we both went down together. I hit the ground back-first, and the injury never fully healed.

Every time the weather shifted, the pain came back. The constant damp of the hills had made it worse over the years.

When we first arrived here, he used to rub it for me himself, slowly and carefully, every night.

The pain blazed up my spine now and I couldn't hold back the tears.

"Luca — I'm your—"

What was I? Since Lila arrived, the wedding had been put off once, then again. We still hadn't married. I was nothing.

Luca scooped Lila up into his arms and turned to look at me, his eyes barely holding back rage.

"Sofia. I've been way too easy on you."

I bit back the pain and slapped him across the face.

"Get out."

Luca took Lila to the village doctor and didn't come back for three days. Three days of peace — I was grateful for it.

I dug out the letter from the bottom of my suitcase, thoughts turning it over from every angle.

The truth was, a month after Lila arrived, the Ferrara family had sent someone.

The messenger was Donato's chief counsel, a woman with a face that didn't invite argument and a voice that meant every word. She read me the letter start to finish, not missing a syllable.

I stared at her. "You want me to... marry Donato Ferrara?"

"Miss Caldwell," she said, crisp and precise, "it would be Don Ferrara now."

That's when it clicked.

The previous Don had been killed last month, betrayed by someone inside his own organization and found dead in the basement of his own estate. Donato Ferrara had stepped into control of the most powerful crime network on the island.

Lila had probably run when the power shift happened. The Caldwell family's network of outside connections had collapsed overnight and she had nowhere to turn.

I read through the letter again. And again.

The counsel had explained: yes, this was a family arrangement, but Donato understood the weight of it. He was giving me a full year to consider. If I refused, he would not force the matter and would guarantee me an independent place of protection, no strings.

When I first heard that, I exhaled quietly with relief.

But now. Maybe it was time to end this.

Rain had been coming down in the hills for a solid month.

I asked Addie to go into town for some herbal medicine, since my back had been acting up. But it was Luca who brought the bowl in, still steaming.

He blew on a spoonful and held it out to me. "You're taking medicine again? Is it your back?"

His voice was a little rough, but there was warmth underneath it.

I turned away. "Like you actually care."

He hesitated, then set the spoon down. A small smile. "You're getting more stubborn every day, Fia. Still upset because I haven't spent enough time with you lately?"

I said nothing.

He kept going, as if he hadn't noticed. "Lila got hurt, and you scared her pretty badly on top of that. As your man, it's only right that I look after her."

He patted my back and sighed like he was the one being reasonable. "You're the older one here. Don't make it into such a big thing."

I was so tired of watching him perform. I knocked his hand away. "Is there something else you need? If not, you can go."

His expression flickered, then smoothed back into something soft. "I know you're still angry. I know you don't want to see Lila. She's been scared too; she came back and won't leave her room because she's afraid of running into you."

I took a few sips of the medicine and looked up. "Just say what you came to say."

He hesitated. "Lila's not healing well if she stays cooped up, but she's scared to go out because she might see you. So how about you stay in the cellar for a few days and give her some space."

I stared at him.

The cellar. The Galvani estate cellar, where they kept enemies for interrogation.

He wanted to lock his own woman in a room built for prisoners, just to make room for the half-sister he'd brought into their lives.

He looked away and rubbed his temple. "I'll have it set up just like the bedroom, I promise. The moment Lila's a little better, I'll come get you. She's your sister, Sofia."

I couldn't hear another word. I threw the bowl of medicine in his face.

He lurched back, looking ridiculous.

"Sofia, do you think you're still the Caldwell heiress? That family's gone. This estate, every stone of it, I built with my own hands. I tell you to go, you go. Someone get her bags."

I looked at him steadily. The snarling face in front of me had nothing to do with the Luca I remembered.

"Finally showing me who you are?" I said.

He stormed out.

I watched his men scrambling to pack my things and wiped my eyes quietly. "Don't bother," I said. "I'll go myself."

I took the letter and a few changes of clothes and walked out.

When I was far enough from the house, I found one of the estate's carrier pigeons — the kind kept for urgent messages — and sent one of my own.

[Sofia agrees.]

It was past time to leave these hills behind.