The nerve of that man.

The Falcone family had been formidable once, generations ago. Old blood, old territory, old respect. By now the name was nothing but gilded rot, a hollow shell dressed up in faded glory. If it hadn't been for the childhood betrothal tying them to the Morettis, if not for the Moretti family's tribute flow and protection routes keeping their rackets solvent, the Falcone name would have vanished from the city's inner circle long ago.

And yet Damian still had the audacity to want it all. Both women. Both fortunes.

What a joke.

My father laughed, the kind of laugh that came from pure, white-hot fury. The signet ring on his right hand stopped moving. "The Falcones have enjoyed a few good years and already forgotten who pulled them out of the gutter?"

Isabella Falcone hurried forward through the crowd, her expression tight with forced composure. Two of the Falcone soldiers near the door shifted on their feet but didn't follow her. They knew better than to step between two families at a moment like this.

"Now, now, let's not say things we don't mean," she said, her tone practiced and diplomatic. "There's so much to manage with a wedding. Damian has been running himself ragged for weeks. He simply lost his head for a moment."

She spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "It's all a misunderstanding. We'll sort it out."

Our family had always been cautious when it came to marriage alliances. A full month before the wedding, my parents had hired a private investigator to look into Damian.

The night before the ceremony, the investigator delivered a stack of photographs. Damian and Adriana. Together. Intimately.

I had been shocked. Furious. But more than anything, I couldn't believe it.

Then I stumbled across that viral post online.

The fog lifted. Damian wasn't just cheating. He was planning to ride the Moretti name to the top, and once he'd squeezed every last drop of value from us, he'd engineer our family's ruin.

I would never let that happen.

My mother let out a sharp, derisive laugh. The rosary was wound so tight around her fingers that her knuckles had gone white, but her voice didn't waver. "Mrs. Falcone, do you take us for fools?"

"Bianca has lived under the same roof as your son since she was ten years old. They've known each other for over a decade. You're telling me he was too tired to recognize his own bride?"

Adriana scrambled to throw on a robe and dropped to her knees in front of everyone, tears streaming down her face like rain on white petals. Her fingers drifted to the base of her throat.

"Mom, this is all my fault," she sobbed. "Bianca overslept, and I was terrified our family would be humiliated, so I put on the wedding dress myself. I was only trying to help."

She turned to look at me, her voice cracking with every word.

"Bianca, please. I was wrong. But it's done now. I've already married Damian. If you keep making a scene, you'll only drag the Moretti name through the mud. Even if you don't care about me, don't you care about the family that raised you?"

Her eyes were rimmed red, her expression the picture of wounded innocence, as if she were the one who'd been wronged. As if the filthy affair with her sister's fiancé had nothing to do with her.

And somehow, I was the one threatening the family's reputation by demanding justice.

That was when the private investigator I'd already contacted arrived. He walked straight to my father and handed him a stack of photographs. The room went quiet. Not the polite quiet of a pause in conversation. The quiet that settles over a back room when evidence hits the table.

"Don Moretti, I'm afraid this situation is more complicated than it appears."

My father opened the envelope. Inside were the same explicit photos I'd already seen.

Every single image showed them in some degrading position, shameless and brazen, without a shred of decency between them.

My father's face turned a deep, mottled red. He slammed the photographs down onto the bed.

"What does the Falcone family have to say for itself now?"

"Mrs. Falcone, if your son wanted the Moretti family's adopted daughter, he could have said so outright. There was no need to humiliate my daughter on her wedding day!"

"The alliance is over. The Morettis are pulling every cent out of Falcone holdings. Every front. Every route. Every dime of tribute support."

The moment those words left his mouth, the color drained from Isabella's face. One gloved hand twitched at her side, but she didn't reach for the fingers. Not yet.

Without Moretti capital, the Falcone operation would collapse entirely. Nothing would be left but a mountain of debt and territory they couldn't hold.

Isabella whipped around and slapped Damian hard across the face. "Look at what you've done!"

Then she jabbed a finger at Adriana. "Someone get this tramp out of my sight! Throw her out!"

Damian pressed a hand to his stinging cheek. His gaze cut toward me, vicious and seething, as though he wanted to tear me apart.

In his eyes, I wasn't the victim. I was the villain who'd ruined his wedding and turned his mother against him.

He pulled Adriana behind his back and squared his jaw, staring his mother down with open defiance.

"Mom! Adriana and I grew up together. We've been in love for years. If Bianca hadn't clung to me and insisted on this marriage, we would've been together a long time ago."

He shot me a sidelong glance, dripping with contempt.

"Bianca is arrogant and selfish. She's not fit to stand beside the Don of the Falcone Family as his wife. I've already promised that her child will have the status of an heir. What more does she want? And she still has the nerve to bring all these people here to cause a scene, humiliating both our families?"

Looking at his shameless face, my stomach churned with disgust and regret.

How had I ever been so devoted to a man like this?

I stared coldly at the despicable pair in front of me and ripped away the last shred of cover they were hiding behind.

"So let me get this straight. The two of you conspired to swap out my vitamin pills with sedatives, causing me to oversleep and miss the ceremony, and somehow that was a favor to both families."

"And I, who simply came with my parents to put an end to this farce, am the one dragging our families' names through the mud?"

I leaned forward, locking eyes with both of them, and spoke loud enough for every single person in the room to hear. "If you two were truly in love, why didn't you just say so from the start?"

"Was it because you wanted to trample both families' reputations underfoot? Or because what you were really after wasn't just a wedding, but the entire Moretti empire?"

The color drained from both their faces in an instant.

Damian's eyes darted away. He stammered, "You... what are you talking about?"

Adriana's tears fell faster, her voice trembling. One hand drifted to the base of her throat, fingers pressing there as if steadying something fragile. "Just because you can't have the man you want, you'd lash out and slander me? I genuinely love Damian!"

I tapped my phone once. Instantly, the link to last night's leaked recording was sent to every guest's phone.

People opened the link, and there was nothing left to misunderstand.

"A cheating scumbag and his scheming kept woman, clawing their way up with dirty tricks, then planning to toss aside the person who got them there. Absolutely disgusting!"

"They pulled something this vile and still had the gall to brag about it. If that were my child, I'd have dealt with them before they could drag the whole family down."

Some turned their fire directly on Damian.

"The Falcone heir really has no shame. If he fancied the Morettis' adopted daughter, he should've just married her."

"This whole scheme was obviously about the Moretti holdings. Steal their rackets, their routes, their tribute flow, and then force the true Moretti blood heir into being some dirty little secret on the side? Does he think the Moretti Family and every prominent family in the city are fools?"

Isabella was shaking with fury. Her palm connected with Damian's face in a vicious slap.

The blow snapped his head to the side, but even then, his first instinct was to shield Adriana.

Isabella saw this and nearly doubled over, clutching her chest, rage and heartbreak warring on her face. One gloved hand curled at her side, the fingers of the other already working at the seam of her left glove, tugging it loose finger by finger.

"You ungrateful wretch! How long has this been going on? And you still refuse to repent!"

"Get on your knees in front of your future in-laws and beg for forgiveness this instant! Throw that shameless woman out and complete your marriage to Bianca, properly!"

With that, she turned toward me, plastering on a warm smile, and reached for my hand.

I stepped back without a flicker of expression, neatly avoiding her grasp.

Isabella's smile froze. A beat later, she forced it back into place, even wider than before.

"Bianca, this is all the Falcone family's fault. I failed to discipline my own son."

"As his mother, I'm apologizing to you on Damian's behalf. Whatever you want, the Falcone family will agree to it."

"I promise you, nothing like this will ever happen again."

That was when Damian straightened his spine, jaw set with stubborn defiance. That fraction of a smile surfaced at the corner of his mouth, too early, as though the room had already bent to his will.

"Mom! The woman I love is Adriana. In this lifetime, the only wife bearing the Falcone name will be her!"

"We're not even married yet and Bianca is already this overbearing, this disrespectful to the Falcone name."

"If you force me to marry a woman like that, it'll be the death of me!"

"If it weren't for the Moretti name backing her, I wouldn't touch this shrew with a ten-foot pole. The fact that I'm willing to give her a child is already the greatest mercy she could hope for."

"If she doesn't know what's good for her, she can be the laughingstock of every Family in the city. A woman whose alliance has been called off is worth less than a coat-check girl at some strip joint. Who would ever want her?"

I watched this man coldly. The man I'd chosen when I was ten years old.

Fourteen years together. I had given him nearly everything I had to give.

Two years ago, old Don Falcone passed away, and the unremarkable Damian took over the Falcone criminal empire. In just three months, he'd managed to offend more than half their backers and silent partners. Not only did he botch the syndicate's flagship racket, he went against the entire circle of capos and poured cash into over a dozen ventures that were guaranteed to bleed dry. In six short months, the Falcone family, a dynasty built over nearly a century of blood and territory, saw its cash flow collapse under billions of dollars in debt.

The family liquidated every front, every holding, every piece of collateral they owned. It still wasn't enough.

With a hundred years of legacy on the verge of total ruin, I was the one who begged my father to save the Falcones from being bled out entirely.

Back then, Damian had knelt before my father, sobbing, swearing he would never betray me in this lifetime. Between him and me, he said, nothing but death would ever part us.

It was the Moretti family's vast network of resources, the tribute lines, the shipping routes, the political contacts threaded through every industry, that allowed Damian to rebuild the Falcone empire in just two years.

And now, before the Falcones had even found solid footing among the city's ruling families, he couldn't wait to force me into being the other woman.

The guests looked at him as though they were watching a fool perform.

Everyone knew that while the Falcone operations still bore the Falcone name on paper, aside from Damian's figurehead title as Don, the entire organization had long since become Moretti property through and through.

A man who depended on his fiancée just to maintain his lavish lifestyle. Where did he find the nerve to provoke the very person bankrolling his existence?

But Damian was completely oblivious. He was convinced I still needed him the way I once had.

When I said nothing, his arm tightened around Adriana's waist.

"Bianca, if you get on your knees right now and bow to Adriana three times, I might be generous enough to forgive your little tantrum."

"Otherwise, you won't even get the chance to bear my children, let alone set foot in the Falcone compound!"

I looked at that arrogant, repulsive face of his, and I couldn't help but laugh.

This kind of idiot? Whoever wanted him could have him.

A blessed woman doesn't walk through a cursed man's door.

My father let out a cold scoff. "My daughter, the pride of the Moretti family, and you think you're worthy of passing judgment on her?"

"This alliance is off."

"When Bianca decides she wants to marry someday, every eligible young man from every Family in this city will be lining up at our door. And if she never wants to marry at all, I'll gladly take care of her for the rest of her life."

With that, he clapped three times and gave a sharp order to the soldiers standing along the walls. "Bring every last piece of my daughter's dowry back. All of it."

"Two hundred cases of cash. Silent stakes in twenty front operations. Ten armored cars. Thirty properties across eight countries. And the thirty billion dollars wired into the Falcone accounts. Recover every cent. Not a single dollar stays behind."

The staggering scale of my dowry drew a collective gasp from the room. Chairs shifted. Someone set down a glass too hard.

"The Falcones are finished. Without the Morettis, they're not even worth the name on the gate!"

"Throwing away a century-old bloodline for some retainer's daughter. Absolutely moronic!"

Adriana let out a shrill scream. "No! That dowry belongs to me!"