"One word from my husband, and the favors your Family could land would set you up for life!"

I watched her ugly little display in silence, and a thought rose unbidden. Twenty years ago, when she'd forced my mother to surrender her place as the lawful wife of the Falcone house, had she worn this same face?

"Sorry. An alliance with the Falcone Family doesn't interest me."

I pressed the buzzer beneath the lip of my desk. "Send up two of my soldiers."

They came quickly, men who moved without sound, and pinned Camilla Russo where she stood. Her eyes went wide. She'd probably never imagined that anyone, given who she was, would actually dare lay a hand on her.

Without warning, the door to my study slammed open again. A tall, lanky boy came charging in, somewhere in his early twenties, dressed like he'd never had to earn the clothes on his back. He jabbed a finger right in my face and started cursing.

"Who the hell do you think you are, putting your hands on my mother? Say the word, and I'll have my father bury this trash little outfit of yours by morning!"

I looked at his young, hot-blooded face, and the line of his brow and eyes, identical to Don Falcone's. Another image flashed before me. That rainy night twenty years ago, when I lost two family members at once. The mother who loved me most, and my unborn baby brother.

If that child had lived, he'd be about this age now.

"This is your son?" There was a faint, barely perceptible tremor in my voice.

"Of course. Lorenzo Falcone, my son with the Don."

I stared hard at the two of them, and then I smiled. "Good."

I rose to my feet and looked at Lorenzo. I turned my mother's thin gold ring once around my finger. "Go back and tell your father. I'd love to see how he plans to deal with me."

The two of them were hauled out, the soldiers' hands closing on their arms without a word wasted. I sat down, picked up the glass of water that had gone stone cold, and drained it in one go.

I knew this was only the beginning.

After they were gone, I gave my consigliere another task. "Pull together everything you can find on Lorenzo Falcone. The more detailed, the better."

A file arrived not long after. Lorenzo Falcone, twenty-one, a college senior, currently placed as an associate at the city TV network.

What a coincidence. The network the Falcones used to launder their name through the territory's papers and broadcasts.

I looked over the file, hesitated for a long while, and finally made the call. It was answered almost at once.

"Adriana? What's got you calling at this hour? Didn't you say you were buried today?"

Hearing Dante Caruso's voice, I fell silent for a few seconds. He was my man, and the Capo who held the strings on every broadcast and printed line that reached this city. I didn't want to drag him into this. But this was something only he could do.

"Do you have an associate over there named Lorenzo Falcone?"

He answered fast. "Yeah. Word is he's the Don's only son and heir. How do you know him?"

I hesitated, then finally asked. "I don't want to see him around. Can you have him cast out?"

Dante went quiet for a beat on the other end. He knew me. He knew I was never one to ask for things without reason.

"Adriana, what happened?"

"It's nothing." I didn't want him to know about my past, so I only said softly, "I don't like the Falcones."

He didn't press. He just answered, clean and simple. "Okay. I'll take care of it."

I let out a breath, and a wave of gratitude welled up in me.

"I'll come by the network to collect you tonight."

After work, I drove to the city TV network. The moment I stepped out of the car, I saw Lorenzo blocked by two of the network's enforcers, still spewing filth from his mouth.

"On what grounds are you casting me out? Because I cursed a few people during work? Let me tell you, my father is Don Falcone. Cross me and you're crossing the whole Falcone Family!"

A man stood beside him, trying to reason with him, his face full of helplessness.

"Signor Falcone, you need to take it easy. You were the one who put hands on a man under our roof first. We're only keeping to the house rules—"

"Rules? I am the rules! Let me make this plain. Until you cast that little tramp out and put her on her knees to beg my pardon, this is far from finished!"

That was when Dante Caruso came out through the doors of the social club.

He found me at once and crossed the floor to me, taking my hand as easily as drawing breath.

"Been waiting long?"

"No, just got here."

I smiled up at him, and Lorenzo Falcone caught all of it.

The instant he saw how close we stood, something turned over behind his eyes.

"Marchetti, I knew it was your hand on the strings! Casting my sister out wasn't enough for you, so now you've sent men to have me thrown out of my own place too!"

He wrenched himself free of the enforcers' grip and came at me with his fist already cocked.

Dante's face went to stone. He pulled me in behind him and drove a kick into Lorenzo's gut.

"Take him out of here."

The two soldiers moved as one, dragging Lorenzo toward the street.

"Marchetti, you dare move against the Falcone Family, and my father will never let it lie. You just wait!"

Lorenzo's cursing thinned into the distance, and Dante looked at me with something close to worry.

"Don Falcone's been one of this city's most respected men for years. What's really underneath all this, that you'd go this far?"

I shook my head, unwilling to say more.

That night, a call came from a number both unfamiliar and impossible to forget.

It was Don Falcone.

Twenty years.

Hearing that voice again, my heart still gave an involuntary twist of pain.

"So you're the Marchetti woman. They tell me you head the whole Syndicate."

On the other end, his voice carried that old trace of looking down from a great height.

"Speaking."

"Who gave a girl like you the nerve to move against my children?"

I let out a scornful laugh and answered without a shred of mercy.

"Don Falcone, you must be confused. Set against the Marchetti name, the Falcone Family is something the territory has already left behind. Why would I waste my hours moving against a dying line?"

"You—"

My words took him past the edge. A man like that had likely never been spoken to this way by anyone younger in the whole of his life.

I could hear him breathing hard down the line, and beneath it, faint and quick, the sound of his signet ring beginning to tap against the table.

"Fine. Very good. Young and reckless, no idea how this world is run!"

"You think the Marchetti name is so untouchable? Then let's see how many days you last on it!"

"I'll be waiting."

I gave him the three flat words and ended the call on him.

Don Falcone moved fast.

First thing the next morning, my assistant came in clutching her phone, her face drawn tight.

"Don Marchetti, you need to see this."

It was already running across every paper and account the Falcones owned, in heavy black print: 【The Marchetti Don — A Private Life in Ruins】.

I read down the column.

A handful of bought gossip sheets had run long pieces, all of them claiming a woman barely past twenty could never have taken the head of a Syndicate without some powerful man propping her up beneath the sheets.

Then came piece after piece, every line hinting that the Family's operations didn't hold up under weight, that we were running on whisper and reputation and nothing more.

"Don Marchetti, several of the allied families have already sent word asking what's true," my assistant's voice was shaking. "If we don't put this down soon, they may pull back from the table."

Before I could answer, a knock came at the office door.

A man from our information men hurried in with a laptop.

"It's bad, Don Marchetti. Bianca Falcone just put a recording out across the channels too."

I took the laptop and watched.

On the screen, Bianca Falcone sat before the camera, painted flawless, walking through every job she claimed to have handled during her time planted inside our operation, one by one.

"These are all the matters I saw through during my time as an associate in the Marchetti operation. Every one of them was my own work, and I stood first among all of them. And yet Don Marchetti cast me out in front of everyone, without a single word of reason."

She paused, her eyes rimming faintly with red.

"It was only later that I found out two of the male associates had been meeting privately with Miss Falcone. I don't want to make malicious assumptions, but the facts are right there in front of everyone."

At the end of the broadcast, she put up a side-by-side comparison of herself and one of those male associates.

The caption read: Where did I fall short?

My right hand was so angry she slammed her palm flat against the desk.

"This is nonsense. That associate handled back-room books. He never touched a single page of the operation's data."

The man who ran our newspapers wrung his hands, frantic.

"Miss Falcone, the whole territory has turned against us. Every voice on the street is calling it bullying within the Family. Why don't you put out word to set it straight?"

I nodded.

"You're right. It's time to put out word."

But what I sent out wasn't a denial. I filed a formal grievance against Bianca directly, before the Commission, for spreading lies and staining the name of the Family.

My move stoked the Falcones' fury all over again.

Before long, Don Falcone reached out and arranged a public sit-down before the whole territory, every made man and capo watching, and asked whether I had the nerve to show my face.

I was about to send my answer when Dante hurried over and stopped me.

"Adriana, don't go. Don Falcone has lined up every paper and every mouthpiece in the city. The master of ceremonies and every man at that table are in his pocket, and the whole thing's already scripted. The second you walk in, the knives come out everywhere."

I listened quietly to the end, then asked him a single question.

"Can you get control of the broadcast feed?"

He nodded before he could think it through.

"That, I can do. But—"

"Then that's enough."

I sent Don Falcone my word directly.

"I'll be there."

I set down my phone, turned, and walked into the washroom, looking at myself in the mirror.

The woman in the glass wore a charcoal-gray suit, standing perfectly straight.

Twenty years. From my mother's terrible death to this day, I had been waiting for this sit-down.

I turned the thin gold ring once around my finger, then spoke softly to my reflection.

"Mom, this is the day I've finally waited for."