"Adriana, I only did this to protect Vittoria. Dante Salvatore is cold, half-blind, and buried in blood. I couldn't stand by and watch her walk into the fire on his arm. Taking her under the alliance was only a temporary measure. Give it time, and I'll cut her loose."

He had already rehearsed his excuse.

"Signor Gallo, I have no interest in being another man's mistress. Leave."

From the moment he abandoned me at the betrothal sit-down, whatever we were had already ended.

Lorenzo's face darkened. "Adriana, can you stop being so selfish? Vittoria was afraid you'd be heartbroken, so she sent me back to keep you company. And this is how you repay her mercy? If you had any sense, I could come to you Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Vittoria and I are bound now, so my time belongs mostly to her."

A bitter feeling rose in my heart. Eight years of loyalty, only to be offered a place in the shadows.

"Lorenzo, we're finished!"

His face darkened further, the temperature in the room dropping with it. "Adriana, are you taking my kindness for granted? It was only a betrothal, a few words spoken between families. Why are you making such a fuss? Long before any oath was sworn, you let me into your bed for eight years. Now you play the wounded woman? If it weren't for you clinging to me, whispering you couldn't live without me, do you think I'd still want you? At your age, still playing coy. How pathetic is that?"

I was shaking with rage.

He had been the one who chased me back then, the one who wept drunk against my shoulder and begged me to ease his pain.

Now he'd bound himself to Vittoria, turned me into a joke whispered through every family in the territory, and still he called me selfish and cold.

"Lorenzo, we're done. From now on, you live your life and I'll live mine. There is nothing between us."

Lorenzo was furious. He flashed that too-wide grin, cracked his knuckles against his palm, then snatched the little box of seashells and hurled it to the floor, scattering it into pieces.

"Adriana, you think you'll be bound to another man? In this circle, every family knows you were mine for eight years. You're used goods. Who would take a spinster no one else wanted?"

In the tense silence, the bathroom door swung open.

Vittoria stepped out, wrapped in a towel, barefoot, the stolen glint of some heirloom already at her throat.

I stopped breathing.

At the sit-down, Lorenzo had taken a call and vanished. For days since, I had watched them parade their devotion through the whisper-network, every image a fresh cut.

Now I couldn't tell whether it was more pain, more bitterness, or more rage I felt.

This house had been bought when Lorenzo and I still believed in each other, each of us paying half. He'd called it our refuge, a safe place filled with our happy memories.

"Adriana, don't blame Lorenzo, he was only trying to help me. If you must blame someone, blame me. I'm the one who shouldn't be here…"

She reached out to take my hand, answering a half-second too quick, her fingers brushing the jewels at her neck as if to be sure they were still hers.

I pulled my hand back on instinct, never touching her, yet she let out a cry and crumpled to the floor.

Before I could react, Lorenzo's hand cracked across my face, knocking me to the ground.

The pain in my hand was immediate. The broken seashells on the floor drove deep into my palm, and blood began to well up and drip, spattering the tile.

"Are you all right, Vittoria?"

He turned and glared at me with disgust.

"If anything happens to her, I won't let you off easy!"

He lifted Vittoria and carried her down the stairs, rushing for the hospital.

I struggled to stand, looking around the house I'd lived in for eight years, and it felt strangely unfamiliar.

On my bed the sheets were rumpled, a torn black stocking hung off the edge, the floor littered with used tissues. The air was thick with a smell that turned my stomach.

I hurried out, tears streaming down my face I couldn't stop.

It was filthy. Even the walls felt dirty now.

Too many shards were buried in my palm to work loose, so I had no choice but to take a taxi to the hospital, pressing my thumb hard against the bare base of my ring finger the whole way.

I chose a hospital far from Salvatore territory on purpose, somewhere no soldier would recognize the daughter of a fallen house. But as fate would have it, I ran into Lorenzo and Vittoria.

Vittoria was cradling her hand, the one that hadn't so much as been bruised, and crying out in pain.

Lorenzo, in his usual gentle manner, lifted her onto his lap and sat her down, carefully pressing the doctor for every precaution, as though her scratch were a bullet wound.

When we first came together, back when both our families still had names worth speaking, he had been just as frantic for me.

One night, when a fever took me, he'd been so rattled he didn't stop for shoes. He only noticed later that broken glass had opened his foot, once he'd confirmed I was safe.

"Adriana, you are my precious. I can't bear to see you get hurt."

As I walked out of the exam room, I bumped into him just as he was coming in.

"Adriana, Lorenzo was only bringing me to have my injury looked at. Are you so restless you had to trail us all the way here?"

Lorenzo gave me a contemptuous look. "Weren't you the one going on about how we're finished? What are you doing now? Adriana, you've no shame left! If you dare touch a single hair on Vittoria again, I won't be gentle with you."

I raised my hand, the palm still crusted with dried blood where the shells had ground in. "Look at the injury. Move aside."

Lorenzo froze in place, a flash of guilt passing through his eyes.

"Adriana, is it serious?"

He moved to come inside, and was cut off by Vittoria's shriek.

"Vittoria, my hand hurts so much…"

Lorenzo stopped paying me any mind, turning at once to carry Vittoria away.

The next morning, the moment I woke, a message came from Dante Salvatore, asking me to make time to try on the custom ring. The Don of the Salvatore Family, waiting on my hand. I pressed my thumb against the base of my ring finger before I even understood why.

After I'd washed and dressed, I was surprised to see Lorenzo carrying breakfast into the room.

"You must be starving. Come and eat."

It was a basket of crab-stuffed rolls and a bowl of pumpkin porridge. One brought me out in hives, the other I couldn't stand.

"Take the day for yourself. The season's turning. Let me take you out for something new to wear."

It was the same old routine. A little sweetness after the wound. He'd been feeding it to me for eight years.

Yet when the time came, he slid into the back seat. "You drive today. I didn't sleep well last night."

I looked at my hand, wrapped in bandages, and couldn't help but mock myself in silence.

In the rearview mirror he sat with his phone, a faint smile playing on his lips.

It wasn't until the car stopped and he caught the sign of the jeweler's outside that his expression darkened all at once.

He blocked my way at the door, his face full of displeasure.

"Adriana, I've told you before, let's wait. Why do you have to push me like this? I'm only signing a pact with Vittoria, not holding an alliance-union. No one has to know. Once the noise dies down, we'll quietly break it and be done."

Before he could finish, another voice cut through him. "Lorenzo, don't you think this diamond ring is beautiful?"

Vittoria was wearing a one-carat stone, lifting her hand and playing coy at him.

Lorenzo's smile snapped back into place at once.

"If you like it, it's beautiful. Our union is in five days. Shall I buy this one to seal it?"

I paused in my tracks, just in time to catch Lorenzo turning his head away, uneasy.

Every word he'd said was a lie. But it didn't matter. In five days, it would be my wedding too. It seemed only to confirm the old truth. Men and women marry, and each goes their own separate way.

The attendant carefully brought over the ring Dante had ordered. A pink diamond, the only one of its kind in the world, stunning and dazzling.

Vittoria's eyes filled with greed as she looked at the ring on my hand.

"Adriana, I really do love the ring on your hand. May I try it on?"

The attendant beside her apologized at once.

"I'm sorry. This one has already been reserved. Perhaps I could show you something else?"

Vittoria's eyes reddened in an instant. Her fingers drifted to the diamond already at her own hand, as though checking it hadn't slipped away.

"Adriana, you know we're to be wed in five days, and you're deliberately setting the staff here against me to make trouble. I truly love this ring. I only want to know what it feels like to be a bride. Can't you just let me try it on?"

"No! I am getting married in five days too!"

Lorenzo's face darkened like ink. "Adriana, are you done yet? When did I ever say I wanted to marry you?"

I furrowed my brows slightly. "Lorenzo, don't get ahead of yourself. The man I'm bound to is not you!"

He sneered, low and repeated, the way a made man sneers when he thinks the code has already settled in his favor. "After eight years promised to me, who else would take you, a soiled woman? A girl should know her own worth. Don't foolishly ruin what little future you have left!"

He stepped forward and roughly yanked the diamond ring off my finger, not caring as my finger scraped and the skin tore.

He was full of joy as he tried to slide the ring onto Vittoria's finger, only to find it too small.

"I'll take this ring. Have it resized. How much?"

The jeweler quietly named the figure, and both Lorenzo and Vittoria went pale.

"Adriana, even if you don't want me to marry Lorenzo, there's no need to be so despicable. Bribing the man to raise the price to cheat us?" Her hand fluttered to her throat, to the jewels that weren't hers, a half-second too fast in her denial.

Lorenzo shook his head at me in disappointment. "Adriana, I never thought you'd be this vicious."

They had tried to take my ring, couldn't cover the cost, and then turned to lay the blame at my feet.

The two of them left in a temper, and my phone rang. Dante.

"Do you like the diamond ring? Don't forget, tesoro, you're to try on the gown later."

"Yes. I really like it."

I drove to the atelier Dante had named, a discreet place with no sign on the door, the kind of front the families used for arrangements that were never spoken aloud. The moment I stepped inside, I saw Vittoria running her fingers along a one-shoulder gown.

"Miss Bruno, I'm sorry, but that gown has already been reserved."

"I want this one. Call whoever reserved it. I'll pay ten percent above the price."

When the seamstress saw me enter, her eyes lit with relief.

"The rightful customer is here now. Why don't you take it up with her, Miss Bruno?"

When she saw me, something ugly flashed across Vittoria's face, resentment and anger both.

"Adriana, why do you always haunt me, always set yourself against me? You stole my ring, and now you come for my gown too."

Beside her, Lorenzo's frown cut deep. "Adriana, you said you wanted to break the pact with me, yet here you are forcing marriage on me with a ring and a gown. You have no shame."

"Even if you came crawling to my wedding, I wouldn't spare you a glance. The gown and the ring both go to Vittoria."

I laughed softly. "Who told you buying a ring and a gown means I intend to marry you? You are not the only man breathing in this world."

"You can't afford the ring or the gown, and now you expect me to hand them over for nothing?"

Lorenzo's face shifted between pale and red, and Vittoria, seeing it, covered her face and fled the room.

"Lorenzo, since you've already settled on the ring and the gown, I'm not needed here. I'll go."

"Adriana!" In a fit of rage, Lorenzo snatched the shears from the cutting table and began slashing at the gown, heedless. Behind me, the seamstress went still, the way people go still in a room where the temperature has just dropped. "I'll teach you to stop forcing marriage and breaking Vittoria's heart! You want to get married, do you? Let's see what you'll wear now that the dress is gone."

That gown had been commissioned by Dante himself, top designers kept awake through the night to finish it. A Salvatore order was not something anyone refused.

I rushed forward to stop him, but he shoved me to the floor, and the sharp shears bit into my other hand.

Lorenzo seemed to have lost his mind, tearing the flawless gown into ribbons.

Not satisfied, he ground it under his heel. "Adriana, dreaming of marrying me? Keep dreaming. If you dare ruin my wedding five days from now, your end will look just like this dress."

With that he didn't spare me another glance, hurrying out after Vittoria.

Beside me the seamstress had gone white, and she reached for the phone with shaking hands.

In the fog of it, my thumb pressed hard against the base of my bare ring finger, where the diamond had been. Dante called. "Are you hurt? Don't trouble yourself over the gown. I'll have my consigliere see to the matter."

"I'm sorry..."