The Mancini family had planned a retreat to the coastal safehouse, a rare few days of peace where the entire household would travel together under armed escort. But when Enzo's old neighborhood flame, Rosalia Vitale, caught wind of it, she begged to be included. Without so much as a glance in my direction, Enzo pulled my reserved seat from the Boss's private convoy and handed it to her, arranging instead for me to ride with the foot soldiers on a thirty-six-hour drive through back roads with no escort.

I looked to my in-laws. Not one of them raised a word of objection.

So I took the arrangement. I took the long road, traveled west, and stayed away for three months. By the time the silence broke, the entire Mancini household had descended into panic.

It was rare for Enzo to step away from the business. His minor protection rackets barely kept him busy, but the appearance of authority demanded his presence, and so genuine time away from the compound was a luxury. When the family decided on a retreat to the villa on the coast, I began planning six months out. I selected the safehouse, mapped the route, coordinated the convoy logistics, arranged for provisions, secured the seaside villa through one of my Ferrante-controlled front companies, and handled every detail from vehicles to meals to security rotations.

No one else lifted a finger. They never did.

I didn't mind the work. If the family was content, if there was a single evening where the tension in the household loosened enough for something resembling warmth, then it was worth it. Arranging a secure convoy with armored vehicles was no small task, so I had booked the seats months in advance. When Nicoletta mentioned she had never ridden in the Boss's private car, the reinforced black sedan with its leather interior and tinted bulletproof glass, I paid out of my own pocket to upgrade every seat in the convoy so the entire family could travel in comfort.

Then, two days before departure, Enzo appeared in the doorway of my study.

"Rosalia heard about the trip. She wants to come." He said it the way he said everything, as though the decision had already been made and my role was simply to absorb it. "The convoy's full, so you'll need to take the long road. I already made the arrangements."

He sent the details to my phone. A route map. A thirty-six-hour drive. No escort. No armored car. Just a seat in a civilian vehicle running with the foot soldiers.

I stared at the screen, then looked up at him.

"What is this, Enzo? This was supposed to be a family retreat. You're bringing Rosalia Vitale?"

"Of course." He didn't even hesitate. "She wants to come, so she comes."

The anger rose in my chest like a slow flame behind my ribs. "When my sister asked to join us, you shut it down immediately. You said this was family only. No outsiders. Just us. Now Rosalia snaps her fingers and you rearrange the entire convoy?"

"Rosalia and your sister are different." He loosened his tie, a gesture that was supposed to look casual but only revealed how little he understood about the weight of his own words. "She and I go back to the old neighborhood. She's closer than family. She practically is family."

I scoffed, the sound sharp enough to cut glass. "I arranged the convoy months ago. Every seat, every vehicle, every safehouse along the route. Why should I be the one riding with foot soldiers?"

"There were no seats left. I had to pull yours and reassign it to Rosalia." He shrugged, one shoulder lifting and falling with the practiced indifference of a man who had never once earned the comfort he took for granted. "The only option left was the long road."

I looked at the route again. Thirty-six hours through secondary highways. No bulletproof windows. No security detail.

"So Rosalia Vitale rides in a Ferrante-funded armored car, in the seat I reserved, while I spend thirty-six hours exposed on back roads with no protection?"

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't you say once that you liked the countryside? The open roads? Here's your chance to see it all."

I turned to my in-laws.

Salvatore Mancini, the retired patriarch, the man who once sat at the Commission table before gambling debts and a failed turf war gutted his family's name, turned his face away. He studied the far wall as though the peeling wallpaper held the secrets of his lost empire.

Donna Agata reached for my hand, her grip soft and useless. "Camilla, dear. Rosalia and Enzo have known each other since they were children. They have so much history, so much to catch up on. It only makes sense for them to travel together. Just bear with it this once. We'll all meet at the villa."

Nicoletta, fifteen years old and draped across the settee like she owned it, didn't even look up from her phone. "Rosalia has a delicate constitution. There's no way she could survive that kind of drive. You, on the other hand." She flicked her gaze toward me, a dismissive sweep from head to toe. "You're strong. Built like a soldier. You can handle it."

I laughed. The sound came out bitter and hollow, echoing off the marble floors I had paid for.

"Who is actually part of this family? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like Rosalia Vitale is your real daughter-in-law."

Enzo's expression darkened. "It's just a drive. It's not a death sentence. Rosalia is practically one of us. It's only right we make sure she's comfortable. Can't you show a little grace? Set an example for the household?"

The doorbell rang.

Nicoletta sprang from the settee with more energy than I had seen from her in months and ran to the front entrance. She pulled the heavy oak door open, and there stood Rosalia Vitale, framed in the evening light like a saint in a gilded alcove. Two oversized leather bags sat at her feet.

"Rosalia! You're here!" Nicoletta seized the handles of both bags and dragged them inside, her voice bright with the kind of enthusiasm she had never once directed at me. "I've been waiting for you all day!"

She threw her arm around Rosalia's waist and pulled her close, cheek to cheek, as though welcoming home a long-lost sister.

"Oh, Rosalia, I missed you so much. If only you hadn't left the country when things got bad, you could have married my brother. We'd all be real family by now."

Donna Agata rose from her chair and crossed the room. She took Rosalia's hands in both of hers, clasping them like a woman greeting a returning queen.

"Exactly. I always thought you and Enzo were meant for each other. In my heart, I've always seen you as my true daughter-in-law." Her eyes glistened. Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. "No one else could ever compare."

They said this openly. In my presence. In the house I had purchased. Surrounded by the furniture I had bought, beneath the chandelier I had restored, in a compound kept running by Ferrante money laundered through Ferrante fronts.

Not a hint of shame.

Something inside me went cold. Not the sharp cold of anger, but the deep, settled cold of a woman who had finally stopped pretending the fire would ever warm her.

Rosalia Vitale and Enzo Mancini had been childhood sweethearts in the old neighborhood. Everyone knew it. But when the Mancini family crumbled, when Salvatore's gambling debts and botched turf war left them half a million dollars in the hole to creditors who did not accept apologies, Rosalia's family had fled. The Vitales vanished overnight, running from the heat, abandoning the Mancinis to their ruin without a backward glance.

It was my father, Don Ferrante, who had brokered the salvation. He absorbed the Mancini blood debt, all five hundred thousand dollars of it, and sealed the alliance the only way the old ways permitted: with a marriage. I became Camilla Mancini in name, though I never stopped being a Ferrante in blood.

I had given everything to this family.

Salvatore and Donna Agata's health had been failing for years. I managed their medications, their doctors, their daily needs. I had taken Nicoletta under my wing when she was ten years old, a wild, undisciplined child with no prospects. I enrolled her in a private academy. I drove her to school every morning and picked her up every afternoon. I sat beside her while she studied, attended every parent-teacher meeting, bought her clothes and books and anything she pointed at. For five years I raised that girl. I was her sister-in-law in name, but I had been more mother to her than Donna Agata ever was.

I gave my in-laws a monthly allowance of ten thousand dollars. I handled every household expense, every meal, every errand. I ran the legitimate fronts, the restaurants and the import-export operations, that generated the tribute keeping the Mancini name alive. One hundred thousand dollars a month, laundered clean through Ferrante channels. I was the financial backbone of an empire that existed only because I held it together.

I never felt like a daughter-in-law. I felt like a servant. A servant who paid her own wages and still wasn't permitted to sit at the table.

And despite all of it, despite every dollar and every hour and every sacrifice scraped from the marrow of my loyalty, they still treated me as less than an outsider.

Rosalia crossed the room toward me. Her steps were unhurried, her smile polished to a shine that didn't reach her eyes. She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume, something floral and cheap beneath the pretension.

"I'm sorry, Camilla." Her voice dripped with a sweetness so manufactured it could have come off an assembly line. "If I hadn't decided to join at the last minute, you wouldn't have lost your seat in the convoy. Honestly, I almost skipped the whole thing when I heard there were no spots left. But Enzo insisted he'd handle it. I had no idea he'd make you take the long road." She pressed a hand to her chest in mock sympathy. "I even offered to take the drive myself, but Enzo wouldn't hear of it. He was so worried about me traveling alone for that long. So I suppose I should thank you for taking the inconvenience."

Nicoletta hooked her arm through Rosalia's and leaned against her shoulder. "Exactly. Can you imagine Rosalia on some back road for thirty-six hours? All kinds of people out there. If some lowlife targeted a girl like her, what would we do?" She looked at me, and her lip curled with something that lived in the cruel space between amusement and contempt. "Camilla, on the other hand, has that look about her. Like a soldier. She'd scare them off before they got within ten feet."

The two of them dissolved into laughter, bright and careless, their voices ringing through the foyer like bells in an empty cathedral.

Enzo must have seen the fury settling across my face, because his tone softened. A calculated retreat, not an apology.

"Look. I know this arrangement isn't ideal. But it's the best solution we have." He paused, reaching for something he thought would placate me. "Last week you were eyeing that bag at the boutique on Fifth. Why don't you go ahead and get it?"

I held out my hand, palm up. "Fine. Five thousand."

His expression curdled. "Five thousand? I already said you could get it. Now you want me to pay for it too? Don't push your luck."

I let my hand drop. A smile crossed my face, thin and sharp as a stiletto.

"Since when do I need your permission to spend my own money, Enzo? Tell me. How much do you bring in each month?"

The flush hit his face like a slap. His jaw tightened. His eyes cut away from mine.

"That's not fair," he muttered.

It was perfectly fair.

Enzo Mancini earned three thousand dollars a month from minor protection rackets, pocket change that barely covered his cigarettes and his vanity. I generated one hundred thousand a month through the Ferrante-controlled fronts and operations I managed single-handedly. His salary didn't cover his own expenses. I had been funding this household, this family, this entire charade of a crime dynasty from the very beginning.

When we married, there was no dowry. No gift from the Mancini side. Nothing. I had absorbed the five hundred thousand dollar blood debt, added thirty thousand as a wedding tribute, and purchased the compound we lived in with Ferrante money. Every comfort they enjoyed, every meal on the table, every dollar in their pockets, every thread of respectability still clinging to the Mancini name, all of it came from me.

If they loved Rosalia Vitale so much, if she was their true daughter-in-law, their old neighborhood darling, their precious returning queen, then they could have her.

Let her fund the operation. Let her run the fronts. Let her keep the Feds at bay and the creditors satisfied and the household fed.

Let them see how long the Mancini name survived on Vitale money.