She produced a small glass vial as she spoke. "I went through a great deal of trouble to find this little gift for you…"
The malice in her smile sent my heart plummeting.
Before I could react, her people pinned me down and forced the ice-cold liquid down my throat.
Moments later, fire erupted low in my belly, and I knew at once: an aphrodisiac, and a devastatingly potent one.
Viviana clapped her hands. Two men shuffled in from the alley entrance, hollow-eyed and leering. Drifters. The kind no one reported missing and no one mourned.
"Crawling with disease, the both of them. A perfect match for filth like you."
She retreated to the doorway.
"When my dear cousin comes home tomorrow and finds you tangled up with street trash, what do you suppose he'll think?"
A vicious scheme.
But she'd overestimated how much I had left to lose. She needn't have bothered. I'd already given up on Matteo.
The moment my body healed, I would leave on my own.
The drug's grip tightened, scattering my thoughts, but I bit down on my lip until the pain kept me anchored.
The two men closed in from either side.
I fought with everything I had, but my broken hands couldn't strike back. They slammed me to the ground.
The back of my skull cracked against the stone floor beside me. Blinding white light split across my vision.
Images flooded in, countless and unstoppable.
A long black car rolling through iron gates. Myself at the head of a convoy moving north through territory no other Family dared touch. Atop the steps of the Moretti compound, the Don gripping my hands, eyes red, calling me "sister."
Every capo and soldier in the inner circle on their feet, glasses raised, voices carrying through the banquet hall in a single toast to my name.
I remembered.
I was no orphan called Josie. I was Adriana Moretti, Donna of the bloodline, Commander of the Northern Routes.
Running border operations at twelve. Securing three contested corridors at fourteen. Pacifying the entire northern territory at sixteen. The elder sister the Don revered. The blood daughter the whole Moretti Family had been searching for.
My eyes snapped open. I wrenched the slender blade from my hair with every ounce of strength I had left and slashed it across both their throats.
The next morning, the Rinaldi house blazed with ceremony.
Viviana wore a white gown fitted for an alliance bride, pearls at her throat and wrists. Matteo himself pinned a diamond into her hair and escorted her out to be wed.
Lorenzo Moretti, the heir apparent, had come in person to receive the bride. A level of ceremony that far exceeded anything owed to a political arrangement with a protected associate's cousin.
When he saw Viviana's delicate face, something nagged at him. She looked different, somehow, from the woman who had played the strings at the gala.
Still, he stepped forward and took both of Viviana's hands in his. His signet ring sat motionless against his knuckle.
She lowered her eyes with a coy smile. One finger drifted to the pearl at her throat. She was lifting her foot toward the waiting car when
a voice, cool and clear as winter steel, cut through the crowd and silenced every soul present.
"I do not consent to this marriage."
