The moment my hand struck out, whatever softening Lorenzo Falcone's cold face had allowed me shattered completely.

He crossed the marble in three strides, ripped the suitcase from my hands, and hurled it to the floor.

The clothes inside scattered across the polished stone like something gutted open.

His handmade leather shoe crushed a dumpling flat as he came at me. I clenched my teeth so hard they ached, staring at the sole of his shoe. In a house where soldiers stood silent at every door, no one moved. No one ever moved when the heir's temper turned.

"Adriana, my patience has limits. Whatever's between the two of us, leave innocent people out of it!"

My hands shook, and my whole body went rigid where I stood. My thumb found the bare base of my ring finger and pressed there, against the spot where no ring had ever been placed.

Bianca's eyes reddened, tears welling up as she looked at me, the picture of innocence. Her fingers drifted to the pendant at her throat, brushing it once, as if to make sure it was still there.

"I'm sorry, Adriana, I only looked up that bus ticket. I'd wanted to send a car to bring her in myself, I never imagined—"

The words trailed off, and her tears dropped one after another, splattering onto the floor, mixing with the spilled filling.

"I was only afraid Mr. Falcone was being deceived. The Falcone name is a special case, after all. There are so many who use a dying mother to force their way into a Family. I just—"

She looked at Lorenzo, biting her lip, shaking her head.

My gaze turned colder and colder. When I spoke, my voice had lost all warmth.

"Lorenzo, you think I'm lying to you too?"

He said nothing, but the look on his face was the clearest answer.

My mother's papers were real, filed at a clinic that owed the Family nothing, in a town no Falcone soldier had ever set foot in. No bought doctor's seal, no forged page.

I'd gone with her for the diagnosis myself, half a year ago. There was no faking it.

So Bianca had set her sights on my mother's bus ticket instead.

She hadn't flown, that much was true.

A plane seat cost what a humble woman couldn't spare. How could she have brought herself to pay for one?

To save money, to scrape together something to send me into the Falcone Estate with, she'd dragged her sick body through more than thirty hours wedged into a cramped coach seat.

All to attend a daughter's union that didn't even exist.

Yet even for a single line in the act, Lorenzo hadn't been willing to play along with me. He'd chosen to break his word instead.

When I really thought about it, he'd never once returned my feelings from the start. The ending was sealed the moment we met.

I'd combed through every little detail of our life together, hunting for proof that he loved me, lying to myself.

Five years, everything kept its uneasy peace. A kept woman, never made part of the Family, never given a name at the table.

But from the moment Bianca appeared, that surface balance was finally broken.

The acting Underboss of the Falcone Family started to have joys and sorrows like an ordinary man.

He started learning to love someone.

When Bianca's stomach hurt, he'd ask me what he should do.

When he anticipated she might have a reaction, he'd have the medicine waiting in the car beforehand.

He'd bring Bianca to every sit-down, every Family banquet in the private hall, introducing her to capos and made men alike as his perfect right hand.

Next to her, I was like a rat in a gutter, reeking of filth.

Even if I offered up my pride with both hands, letting him and his sweetheart trample it as they pleased, I still couldn't buy a place in this fight.

What I couldn't have, I didn't want anymore.

The spot where the bag had struck Bianca swelled and reddened fast, tears rolling down one by one.

Lorenzo cursed out loud on the spot, furious.

But his hands didn't stop. With practiced ease, he took the salve from her bag, dabbed it on his fingertips, and smoothed it onto Bianca's face.

After soothing her, he turned to me, his voice edged with threat.

"Adriana, don't push your luck. Bianca is innocent. Yesterday, the first thing she said when she came to after collapsing at the hospital was for me to hurry to the union and find you."

"Look at yourself right now. You're nothing but a jealous shrew! How can you face her after she did that for you?!"

"Adriana, I'll say it one last time. Apologize to her!"

"Make a scene like this again, and you'll get out of here!"

I acted as if I couldn't hear a word, just kept my head down, gathering the luggage that had spilled across the floor.

The minutes ticked by, and somewhere in that silent house a clock counted them out, each one too loud. Lorenzo's patience ran dry.

He took two long strides to stand over me, bent down, and yanked a fistful of the long hair at my shoulders, his features savage, twisted, terrifying.

A tearing pain shot through my scalp. I clenched my teeth so I wouldn't cry out, my eyes shot through with bloodred veins, glaring at Lorenzo. My thumb was still pressed to that bare spot on my finger, the only thing holding me upright.

His voice was vicious. "Can't hear me? Or you don't know how to apologize? Adriana, I really have spoiled you rotten!

You wanted the dumplings your mother wrapped, didn't you? Then how about you taste them right now!"

I bit down hard, but my head was forced down against the floor and ground into it, beyond my control.

My lips crushed out of shape, tears mixed with flour clinging to my face.

But Lorenzo still wasn't satisfied. He erupted, dragging my head up in front of him with one hand while the other rained slaps across my face. Not one soldier in that room turned to look. In this life, you learned what you were not permitted to see.

A bloody sweetness welled up in my throat, and the blood on my forehead blurred my sight.

"Open your mouth, then! Weren't you so tough? Come on, open up and let me see if my aim's any good?"

With that, he snatched a dumpling from the floor that was still mostly whole and ground it into my face until it was nothing but mashed filling.

"Smell good? Enjoying your meal? Now apologize to Bianca!"

"Or I'll send your mother straight back to wherever she crawled out from!"

The veins stood out along Lorenzo's neck, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. The banquet hall had gone silent around us, the way a room goes silent when a made man loses his temper and no one is fool enough to breathe.

Beside him, Bianca pressed a hand to her forehead, tears welling in her eyes.

Lorenzo turned his head and caught the sight. When he looked back at me, his voice came out cold. "Adriana, can't you understand a word I say?"

My gaze went colder and colder. I let the blood slide down my face however it wanted.

Only when he sensed something was off did a flicker of panic cross his eyes, though he still knit his brows and narrowed them, studying me.

Bianca spoke up weakly, trying to smooth things over. "Don't fight because of me. I'm really fine." Her fingers drifted to the pendant at her throat, checking it was still there. "I'm so sorry, Adriana. If I'd known, I never would've come back with Mr. Falcone. I just thought it would be better if I explained in person…"

When she finished, she actually stepped slowly toward me, her heels soundless on the marble.

She bent down and reached out to help me up, and the moment her hand touched my arm, I flung it away hard.

The force sent her hand slamming into the leg of the cabinet behind her, and she let out a muffled cry of pain.

Lorenzo took her hand with aching tenderness, examining the spot where it had struck and turned red, and only after confirming it was nothing serious did he whip around to glare at me.

"Adriana, don't you dare throw my goodwill back in my face!"

"Do you have any idea what Bianca gave up for that union of yours? Keep making a scene, and I'll expose your lies at your makeup ceremony, right in front of your mother!"

My makeup ceremony?

I couldn't help the laugh that broke out of me.

"And what exactly did she give up? Wanting to show up in my place, to stand beside you at the altar the Family chose for me? How very noble of her."

I lifted my hands to applaud Bianca, the blood at the corner of my mouth running down the mocking curve of my lips.

"Lorenzo, a makeup ceremony for me. Don't you find that ridiculous? There's no need. There won't ever be any need!"

My voice was colder than it had ever been. In the quiet, the only other sound was the soldier by the doors shifting his weight, careful not to look at any of us.

His eyes fixed on my face, as if he wanted to glare a hole right through it.

He thought I was the same as before, putting on an act because I was jealous.

A pity that everything now was more real than the gold buried in his mother's vaults.

He cracked the knuckles of one hand, slow, deliberate, then ground out the words one by one through his teeth.

"Adriana, my patience with you is very limited. Think it through before you talk to me."

"Don't forget you begged for this on your knees! Miss this chance and there won't be another!"

"Watching you marry into this Family was your mother's dying wish. And now it isn't? Can you face her like this?"

I lifted my eyes, mockery in them. "Since when has your patience for me been limitless? I've thought it through, and I really do thank you for your kindness. Neither my mother nor I are worthy of it, so save the union for someone who needs it."

When I finished, I looked at Bianca with a cold smile.

Hearing the sneer in my tone, Lorenzo narrowed his eyes and probed.

"Not worthy of it? Or are you afraid of being exposed on the spot, that your mother's terminal illness is a lie?"

"I know it was wrong of me to miss the union I promised you, so I've already arranged a specialist consultation at our hospital for your mother. Why don't you need the ceremony now? What terminal illness is so afraid of the light?"

In an instant the blood in my whole body froze. I clenched my fists with all my strength, my knuckles trembling, my thumb pressing hard against the bare base of my ring finger where no ring had ever been placed.

"Lorenzo, shut your mouth! What right do you have to bring up my mother's dying wish?"

"My mother's dying wish was to see me happy, not to make me marry into your blood!"

"Who do you think you are? Do you even deserve to have my mother put on an act with her life? That damn consultation, I don't need it, and neither does my mother! Spare me your fake kindness!"

"From today on, we have nothing to do with each other! Not a thing! We never have to see each other again!"

With every word I spoke, Lorenzo's face darkened another shade.

By the end it was black as the bottom of a pot.

He cracked the knuckles of his other hand, louder this time, and forced the words out through clenched teeth.

"Adriana, I'm warning you, think every single word through in that dog brain of yours before you say it! Your mother has a terminal illness? What, did you inherit dementia? Or did your brain pack up and leave home?"

I watched his lips open and close, and the love that had once filled me turned in that moment into endless hatred.

Lorenzo picked up his phone and called the men who ran the banquet hall.

"The hall I rebooked yesterday, cancel it. From now on, no woman named Adriana is allowed to hold any event in that room! No matter whose union it is, you don't take it!

Otherwise you can shut your doors, every last one of you, and crawl back to whatever gutter you came from!"

The moment he finished he hung up, then dialed a different number, the doctor the Family kept on its leash.

"The specialist consultation I arranged last night for Donna Costa, cancel it right now."

The other end went still for a beat before answering him.

"I'm very sorry. Donna Costa's consultation was canceled yesterday. The patient has already passed away."