Six years I had spent as the secret lover of my stepbrother, the young Don of the Falcone Family.

The night before the alliance dinner, I slipped past the soldiers at the door of the Family's back office to surprise him.

But outside his office, I happened to overhear him speaking with Matteo, his right hand.

"That little stepsister of yours. Haven't you had your fill of her yet? When are you cutting her loose? Don't tell me you've actually fallen for her?"

Lorenzo Falcone's mouth curled with mockery. He answered without a trace of concern, a glass of red set down on the desk with a soft click.

"Fallen for her? She's a plaything that walked right up to my door for free. Why turn down something free? The only woman I'll ever put a ring on is Adriana."

"Her mother clawed her way into this Family and broke my mother's marriage. These six years have been nothing but her punishment. It's exactly what she deserves."

So this whole time, what I'd taken for love was nothing but a vendetta.

Every tender thing he'd ever done was a lie he'd deliberately spun.

If that was how it was, then I would simply leave.

...

"Don't worry about me. Just see to it the wedding is ready for Adriana and me. As for Caterina Falcone, I've got plenty of ways to make her pay."

"Picture it. She fell for her own stepbrother, crawled into his bed night after night, and then gets exposed before the whole Family at the wedding for a scandal that filthy. Do you think she'll ever be able to hold her head up under the Falcone roof again? Honestly, I can hardly wait."

Matteo's face tightened. He rolled an unlit cigarette slowly between two fingers, then offered him quiet, well-meaning counsel.

"The old Don and your mother had been split three years before Rosa ever set foot in this house. You can't lay that at Caterina's feet, can you? She was barely grown back then. She had no idea what went on inside this Family. Treating her like this. Isn't it too cruel? A woman's honor is everything to her, Lorenzo. You're using her whole life as a blade in a blood feud. She loves you. If she ever learned you only kept her close to settle a score, I'm afraid she'd—"

Lorenzo pressed his lips together, impatient, then pulled out his phone and lazily fired off a message to me.

"Her life is exactly what I want."

"Don't feed me that innocent-victim line. When my mother was cast out, wasn't she innocent too?"

"She was born out of that seductress's belly. If her fate is rotten, she has only herself to blame. She chose to sink this low."

"If she'd had any pride, she never would have agreed to be with me six years ago. Every step that brought her here was her own choice. She has nothing to complain about."

Matteo let out a long breath and tucked the cigarette away unlit. He asked one last question.

"You say all that, but six years is a long time. I don't believe your heart never once stirred for her."

"Lorenzo. Let me give you one honest word. Some things, once they're done, can never be taken back."

Lorenzo's face went cold. He shot him a vicious look.

"Fall for the daughter of my enemy? What kind of man do you take me for?"

"Looking at that face of hers, eighty percent her mother's, turns my stomach even when I kiss her."

"Raised by that homewrecker, she's just another worthless piece of trash. Dragging her name through the mud is me being generous."

Seeing there was no talking him down, Matteo could only leave, resigned.

Footsteps drew closer.

I scrambled to hide, but the blue roses in my hands scattered across the floor.

Matteo and I came face to face in that rushed instant, his eyes full of pity.

Lorenzo heard the sound and came out after him.

What he saw was me, crouched and flustered, gathering up the flowers.

His expression flickered with panic for a moment before he hurried to help me up.

"Caterina? What are you doing here? When did you get in?"

I smiled, and yet the tears slipped down on their own.

"Just now. I wanted to surprise you, but my hands are so clumsy I couldn't even hold on to the flowers."

He smiled, all indulgence, and tossed the flowers aside without a second thought.

Then he led me into his office.

The moment the door shut.

He pressed my body against it, his burning heat seeping through my clothes.

Yet cold spread through every inch of me.

"I told you, you don't need to bring gifts. You being here is the best gift I could ask for."

"Tired from the trip? Rest a while. Once I've finished here, I'll take you home."

When he finished, he pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.

The gesture was as gentle, as full of tenderness, as it had always been.

Yet I could no longer feel any warmth from him.

So it turned out a person really could act out a lie this thoroughly, all for a vendetta.

Back when my mother married into the Falcone Family, I stood at that ceremony branded the homewrecker's daughter, unable to lift my head.

I hid in a corner of the Estate and sobbed while the made men's wives whispered.

It was Lorenzo who appeared then, the only salvation I had.

He silenced the gossip swirling around me with a single flat look that made grown soldiers find somewhere else to be.

He said he would protect me for the rest of my life, that he would be someone I could lean on.

I believed him.

I sank into the tenderness he gave me, unable to pull myself free.

I never knew it was all a vendetta he had planned from the start.

The love was nothing but a reflection on water, a flower in a mirror.

He was the very person waiting to push me into the abyss.

While Lorenzo was buried in Family business, I sent my mother a message.

"Mom, I want to leave the territory. Go across the ocean."

"Don't tell the Family about this yet."

On the drive back to the Estate, the car gliding past the dark warehouses that fed the Family's cash flow, he spoke up as though it were nothing:

"The old Don's pushing me to make an alliance marriage. I've already gotten someone to help me stage the whole thing."

"Don't worry, you're the only one I've ever loved. She's agreed to help me keep it hidden. I'll still keep you here at my side."

I looked at the scenery outside the window and nodded in silence.

Tears fell without a sound.

The moment we got home, while he was washing up, I unlocked his phone.

The pinned contact was saved as Adri.

I opened the chat, and past the cute little stickers,

it was packed, wall to wall, with surveillance footage from my bedroom.

The messages beneath cut straight through to the bone.

"I told you, all I feel for her is the need for a reckoning. These videos, I'll play them at the wedding, in front of every capo and every guest. After that day, Caterina will be struck from the Falcone name for good. From then on, the only one at my side will be you."

"Before you walk through those doors, I'll clear away every obstacle for you. All that will meet you afterward is happiness."

"Adri, I love you."

I raised my eyes to the stuffed toy he'd given me six years ago.

In the dim light,

the toy's eyes glinted with an eerie red glow.

So from the very beginning, he had been planning how to get rid of me, the obstacle in a blood feud I never knew I was part of.

And how laughable that I had drowned myself in his hollow lies.

Believing I was happy.

I opened Lorenzo's private album.

Everywhere I looked were pictures of him and Adriana.

From their days before he took the ring all the way to now.

The photos chronicled the whole history of their love.

Every important holiday, every Christmas, every Sunday sit-down he claimed had run long, he'd made excuses about the Family needing him.

In truth, he had spent every one of them at Adriana's side.

Every gift he ever gave me,

Adriana had received the same.

And what Adriana had, I did not.

The second chat in the app was a record of his conversations with a wedding planner.

He had begun preparing this alliance marriage six months ago.

From the venue itself down to the very wine and crystal at the banquet.

He had handled all of it himself.

Even the surveillance videos, he had cut together with his own hands.

All so that at the wedding, before the assembled famiglia, he could tear apart, completely, this love that was never supposed to exist.

The instant before Lorenzo came through the door,

I switched off the phone.

I booked myself a one-way passage across the ocean, three days out.

At the dinner table that Sunday, Vittorio kept circling back to his son's marriage, the old Don's voice carrying the quiet weight that made every soldier at the long table sit straighter.

Lorenzo pretended to be worn down by it.

He agreed offhand.

He set the wedding for three days from now.

The fork slipped from my fingers and rang against the china in the silence.

I ate the whole meal without tasting a thing.

After dinner, my mother called me into her room, her face full of worry. She smoothed the front of her plain dress with both hands, the servant's reflex the Family had beaten into her.

"Why the sudden decision to leave the territory? Didn't you insist on standing beside your brother in the Family? Have you told him about this?"

Looking at my mother's half-gray hair, an ache rose sharp in my nose.

"No. I need you to keep this from him."

"Mama, once I'm gone, be happy with Uncle Vittorio. Don't listen to what the others in this house whisper."

I knew how hard it had been for her to decide to marry again, to walk into a Family that would never see her as anything but the woman who broke the old Don's first marriage.

Whatever Lorenzo believed, my mother had never come between anyone's love.

A ruined name shouldn't be how her story ended.

When I got back to the bedroom, Lorenzo was already waiting on the bed.

The moment he saw me, he pulled me into his arms.

His lips kept brushing against the tip of my ear.

"Are you upset? You know what we are can't be spoken of. Omertà cuts both ways, cara. I'll handle the alliance marriage myself. Think of it as cover, just an act to bind the Carbonis to us. Don't read too much into it."

"Trust me, Caterina. There's only you in my heart. Don't sulk anymore, all right? I bought you a present. It'll arrive tomorrow. You're going to love it."

I swallowed the hurt and nodded with a smile.

He thought nothing of it, let out a breath, and pulled me back into his arms.

After a while, he spoke, hesitant.

"It's just, a Falcone wedding can't be some quiet little thing. Every family in the territory will be watching. As my sister, you might..."

"Fine. I'll be there."

I knew what he wanted to say.

Rather than let myself be cornered, it was better to offer it up first.

At least that way I could keep some dignity.

He seemed surprised at the change in my attitude.

But he'd gotten what he wanted, so he didn't bother to look closer.

That night, he slept in my bedroom as usual.

Early the next morning, he slipped out of the room before anyone under the Estate's roof had woken.

Lorenzo had barely left when I headed out too.

To arrange my papers and see the crossing settled, the quiet flight that would carry me across the ocean.

I never expected to run into Adriana Carboni there.

Lorenzo stood behind her, his eyes full of doting tenderness as he looked at her.

From nearby came the low chatter of the men who handled such arrangements for the connected families.

"Is that the young Don's betrothed? What a presence. If I'm not mistaken, that bag is the new limited edition Hermès. You can't get one no matter how deep the tribute runs."

"Has to be. I heard they've been together since before he took the ring, all the way to now. They even bought a little island across the water for the honeymoon. I bet they're here to arrange the crossing so they can travel the world."

"What is this, something out of a story? I'm so jealous. If my man carried himself like the young Don, my whole life would be worth it..."

While I stood there dazed, the man handling my papers spoke up.

"Miss Falcone? Miss Falcone? Everything's arranged."

His voice caught Lorenzo's attention.

Just as I was tucking my things into my bag, Lorenzo appeared in front of me.

There was a flicker of something on his face, a barely detectable fluster.

"Caterina? What are you doing here?"

Adriana came up from behind him too, wrapping herself intimately around his arm. Her too-bright laugh rang out a beat too long.

"You must be Lorenzo's sister. Hi there."

"We're going to be one Family soon, so I figured we should get acquainted early."

My gaze passed over the place where the two of them touched.

I smiled and nodded.

"Adriana."

"It's nothing. I came to arrange papers for my mother. She's always wanted to see the old country."

"You two go on. I won't keep you."

I turned to leave.

But Lorenzo chased after me and caught my arm.

Anxious to explain.

"Don't read into this. Coming today was my father's wish too. You know how much the old Don cares about this alliance. He insisted I take her across the water."

"He even wants Adriana at the Sunday sit-down tonight. I'm telling you ahead of time so you don't get the wrong idea."

Watching him fret like that on my behalf.

I suddenly felt like laughing.

Adriana was the one he'd loved for years, after all.

Now the wedding was almost here, and his little vendetta was nearly at its final curtain.