Lorenzo hesitated for a few seconds before answering, his voice softening in a way it never did for anyone else. "I'm sorry, Bianca. Tonight's the Christmas sit-down. I gave my father my word I'd bring Adriana to the table with the family."

"Fine, then. Buon Natale to all of you."

The deep loneliness in Bianca's voice put a flicker of tenderness into Lorenzo's eyes.

He soothed her gently. "Bianca, I promise you, next year I'll be at your side on your birthday."

"And our daughter will be right there beside you too, by then."

Watching the happiness spread across Lorenzo's face, my eyes stung, and my brow twitched before I could stop it.

Then, all at once, a cry came through the earpiece, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

Lorenzo's face went taut with urgency. "Bianca, what happened?"

"I slipped on the ice. I'm hurt."

"Is it bad?"

"No... not that bad."

"Tell me where you are. I'm coming right now."

Bianca made a show of refusing. "There's no need, Lorenzo. I can have one of my father's men run me to the clinic."

"I won't let a little thing like me ruin your night with the family."

Lorenzo's brows knit together, and his tone left no room for argument. "Tell me where you are."

Once he had the answer he wanted, he hung up, pulled the car to the shoulder of the road, and woke me.

"Adriana, my underboss just called. There's an urgent matter with the family."

"I'm sorry, I have to get back."

"Can you find a way home yourself?"

"Or I'll send the driver back for you once he's dropped me."

I lifted my head and looked out the window. Everything was pitch black, and heavy snow was falling in thick, feathery flakes.

We were far from the Territory, out past where the Family's reach thinned into empty country roads, and it was Christmas night. Forget a car for hire. There wasn't a single light moving on the road.

I didn't want to agree, but I was pushed out all the same.

Lorenzo hit the gas, and the car shot far into the distance.

Hurried and final.

He was so worried about Bianca that he couldn't even be bothered to say one more word to me.

I took out my phone and found the signal was faint. Out here, past the last of the Family's protection, the thing was useless.

With no other choice, I pulled my coat tighter around me and set off into the wind and snow, stumbling forward one uneven step at a time.

More than two hours later, shivering with cold, I finally reached the iron gates of the Valente estate.

Through the bars I could see the whole place lit up bright, laughter drifting out now and then, the low sound of a family that still ate together while mine had been buried one man at a time.

A servant spotted me and hurried to open the gate.

"Signora Bianchi, why are you arriving so late?"

I didn't explain. I only asked, "Where's Lorenzo? Is he already here?"

"The young Don arrived long ago, with the Falcone girl."

The servant chose his words carefully.

He knew the old story from years back. How Marco Greco had broken the alliance pact to take Bianca instead. How the shock of it had helped drive my father into an early grave. The scandal that had set every Family in the harbor Territory whispering at the time.

He was afraid of touching a nerve.

A bitter look crossed my face.

Even a servant knew this was a subject to tiptoe around, yet Lorenzo didn't care in the slightest how it sat with me.

I came into the front room. Bianca sat on the sofa, pressed close against Lorenzo, the two of them talking and laughing.

The moment they saw me, they pulled apart at once.

"Adriana, you're finally here."

"I was worried sick."

"Why was your phone dead every time the driver called for you?"

I said calmly, "The battery died."

In cold more than ten degrees below freezing, no phone kept its charge for long out on an open road.

"I'm sorry, Adriana. This is all my fault."

Seeing me covered in wind and snow, Lorenzo's face filled with guilt as he took my hand and drew me down onto the sofa.

Salvatore and Rosa Bianchi came over too, fussing over me with warm concern, scolding their son. How could he leave his wife alone out on the road like that on Christmas night?

Off to the side, Bianca wore a look of unspeakable awkwardness.

I turned my head to glance at her, and saw only a faint bruise on her forehead.

Meanwhile I had frozen in the snow for over two hours, half my leg gone numb.

The table was laid heavy, every dish one of my favorites, the way the old kitchens of the Estate had always done for family blood.

Clearly, Salvatore and Rosa had put real care into welcoming me, the wife their son had married into the Family.

At the table, Lorenzo stayed at my side the whole time, two fingers resting flat against the linen where a man in his place kept them when he believed he held the room.

The family talked warmly about what to name the coming child, the heir that would carry the Bianchi name.

I didn't register the taste of the food, nor did I catch the outcome of the discussion.

I remembered only the crazed jealousy simmering in Bianca's eyes across from me.

After the meal, I rested alone in the guest room, the house gone quiet the way a house does when the enforcers have been sent to the far wing.

Bianca burst in without warning and drove a vicious kick into my injured leg.

I writhed on the floor in pain, while her face twisted into something savage.

"Adriana, there's something I have to tell you today."

"The baby in your belly isn't yours. It's mine and Lorenzo's!"

"So you have no right to be discussing its name!"

"You crippled wretch, you useless thing!"

"Eight years ago, I stole the man you loved most right out from under you!"

"And you didn't dare make a single sound!"

"Even now you're still useless."

"Marco is mine, and Lorenzo is mine too!"

"You'll forever be nothing but a clown!"

"Oh, and one more thing."

"The truth is, eight years ago, your father didn't have to die."

"After they carried him into the clinic, someone pulled a few strings and swapped out one of the drugs that would have saved him."

At those words, it was as though lightning struck me. My whole body shook violently.

"Who is this person?"

My father was the old Don. His death was a wound that would never heal in me, a debt beneath the code that no one had ever answered for.

I forced myself up, ready to press her for an answer, when Bianca suddenly snatched the fruit knife from the low table and drove it, blade turned inward, into her own shoulder.

I froze, unable to understand why she would harm herself.

Amid her shrill, piercing scream, Lorenzo shoved the door open and came in.

Bianca clutched her wound, sobbing out "Adriana, don't!"

"Don't hurt me. I never meant to take Marco from you back then."

"Please, I'm begging you, forgive me!"

Blood ran down between her fingers, staining the brand-new, absurdly expensive watch on her wrist a deep red.

Rage boiling up in him, Lorenzo's face went a purplish blue, and he raised his hand and dealt me a savage slap.

"Adriana, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"Bianca saw you weren't feeling well and came out of kindness to check on you."

"And you take a knife to her over something from years ago?"

The way Salvatore and Rosa looked at me changed too. The old man's cane had gone still against the floor.

They probably never would have dreamed that I, always so gentle and kind, could do such a thing.

Bianca said with feigned tenderness, "Lorenzo, don't blame Adriana."

"If you have to blame someone, blame me. I shouldn't have called you out, and I certainly shouldn't have taken that fall in the snow."

"It's my fault Adriana had to walk so far on a night like this."

"And eight years ago, it really was me who broke her alliance."

"I'm guilty. I deserve this knife."

Lorenzo's heart ached so badly that tears fell. "No, Bianca, you did nothing wrong."

"Marco broke that pact and ran from the altar because he never loved Adriana at all."

"It had nothing to do with you!"

"And tonight, I went to bring you back of my own free will."

"None of that is your fault either."

I didn't take in a single word, my eyes gone bloodshot, fixed on Bianca and refusing to let go.

All I wanted now was the answer: who exactly had killed my father, the old Don, in the betrayal that broke the code.

Sheltered behind Lorenzo, she threw me a taunting look, one finger drifting up to touch the diamond at her throat.

I lunged toward her like a woman gone mad, only to be held back fast by Salvatore and Rosa.

Lorenzo, at the end of his patience, called for the soldiers of the house and had me thrown straight out of the Estate.

"Adriana, if it weren't for the alliance our blood swore, I'd have handed you over long ago!"

"Go home and cool off!"

"One more time, and we dissolve the pact between us!"

The instant the Estate gates shut, my heart already dead to ash, I turned my father's old signet ring once around my finger with my thumb, then walked away without a moment's hesitation.

My figure vanished completely into the dark of the wind and snow.