"From the day you married into the Conti name, this house hasn't known a single peaceful day!"
On the other end of the line, the Conti matriarch's tongue clicked twice against her teeth before the venom came, shrill enough to split my eardrum.
"And now you won't even spare my grandchild!"
"Adriana, what is wrong with you?"
"I'm telling you, if anything happens to my grandchild, I'll make you pay with your life!"
The angrier she got, the louder she screamed.
As if every fault belonged to me.
And that oath-breaking son of hers had somehow become the innocent victim.
I held the phone and listened in silence.
My chest ached, tight and heavy.
Nine years of marriage.
Nine years of giving.
Nine years bound to a man my bloodline had financed, a crew and a territory floated to him on Falcone tribute money. I'd patched his soldiers in the back-room, kept their bullet wounds off the Fed ledgers, waited on his mother, held the whole household together.
And in the end, in their eyes, I counted for less than the unformed child in Gianna's belly.
When she finally ran out of breath to curse with, I spoke slowly.
"Mom."
My voice was soft.
But it silenced her at once.
"An ectopic pregnancy is usually linked to damage or inflammation in the fallopian tube. In some women, long misuse of birth control raises the risk too."
"My findings come with full records and the surgery's mark on them. It isn't something anyone can just alter."
"If you really want to know the cause."
I paused.
"You should go ask that good son of yours."
With that, I hung up.
Then I dropped the number into the block list.
Quick, clean.
Without a moment's hesitation.
Half an hour later.
The lawyer who'd come up through the bloodline alongside me sent over the reckoning papers.
I printed the file.
Turned through it page by page.
And at the bottom, I signed my name.
Adriana Falcone.
The two words came out calm and certain.
Like a period placed at the end of a nine-year marriage.
Walking toward Gianna's room with the papers in hand, I'd already worked out exactly how I would lay them before Dario.
But the moment I reached the door of the room.
My steps stopped short.
What I saw made me frown.
The corridor outside was packed with people.
A dozen lenses were all trained on the door.
Hired faces, men with cameras, the wrong kind of ears.
They had the whole corridor jammed solid.
Mira Greco and Marco were boxed in at the center.
Their foreheads slick with sweat.
Explaining something, over and over. Marco kept glancing at the Capo before he finished each sentence, waiting for a permission that never came.
And Dario stood in the middle of the crowd.
His face dark.
Like he was waiting for something.
The instant he saw me appear.
His expression changed.
At the same moment.
Every lens swung toward me.
Lights went off in a frenzy.
So sharp I couldn't keep my eyes open.
"Is it true your error left the woman worse off after the work was done?"
"We hear you had a private grudge with her. Did you use your place in the Family to settle it?"
"They're saying on the street your standing was never earned. Is it true?"
"Word is your name as the Family's surgeon came through favors, not skill. How do you explain that?"
Question after question surged in like a tide.
Closing in around me.
I couldn't even take a step forward.
Mira Greco hurried over to hold them back.
"Everyone, calm down!"
"The matter is already being looked into!"
"Don't go spreading what hasn't been proven!"
But no one out there was listening.
And right then.
Dario spoke.
"What's there to look into?"
His voice carried down the whole corridor.
Everyone fell quiet at once.
He slowly raised his hand.
Pointed at me.
His eyes cold.
"Isn't the truth already right in front of us?"
"Adriana used her place in the Family to settle a private grudge, and it brought a serious problem to the table."
"My woman is still fighting for her life."
"We don't even know if she'll make it."
"And yet the one who caused all this walks free, going about her work like nothing happened."
He spoke with righteous fury.
As if he truly were demanding a reckoning for the wronged.
But only I knew.
The victim he kept naming.
Was his outsider woman.
And I.
I was the one who had been betrayed and wronged.
"A woman like this."
Dario stared me down.
"What right does she have to keep her hands in the Family's work?"
"What right does she have to stand here?"
"I demand that Adriana answer for it, right now, before all of you!"
"Answer to Gianna!"
"Answer to every soul she's ever cut into!"
"Admit what she's done!"
A wave of muttering broke out all around.
Every lens fixed on me.
Waiting for me to break down.
Waiting for me to explain.
Waiting, even, for me to drop to my knees.
It suddenly struck me as absurd.
He was the one who broke the oath of our marriage.
He was the one who carried his pregnant outsider into my back-room.
I was the one who saved Gianna's life under crushing pressure.
And now I was the unforgivable one.
I drew a deep breath.
Pushed down the storm rising in my chest.
And lifted my head.
"Dario."
I looked straight into his eyes.
My voice wasn't loud.
But it reached every ear in that corridor, clear.
"What you've done."
"You know better than anyone."
"You broke our vows—"
"Shut your mouth!"
Dario's face changed in a flash. He wet his lower lip, and that half-beat-too-soon thing started in his throat.
The moment I started, he came at me.
No one had time to react.
The next second.
"Crack."
A slap landed hard across my face.
This time.
Harder than yesterday.
Heavier.
It knocked me staggering backward.
A thick taste of blood flooded my mouth.
A tooth loosened and fell out.
Blood ran from the corner of my lips.
The whole place went dead silent.
Even the men with their cameras froze.
No one had expected him to strike me in front of all those eyes.
But Dario was like a man gone mad.
He jabbed a finger at my face and roared.
"Adriana!"
"You say one more lying word and I'll rip your mouth apart!"
His face was twisted, vicious.
Not a trace left of the smooth, well-mannered soldier he'd once played.
Then.
He turned to Mira Greco.
His voice full of threat.
"I want this dealt with today!"
"Or I'll carry it all the way up to the Don himself!"
"I'll make sure every man in this territory knows your house buries its mistakes!"
"I'll drag your name through the mud!"
Mira Greco's face was grim beyond words.
All around him pressed the cameras.
The gathering crowd.
Too many eyes, and somewhere among them the wrong ears, the kind that carried things back to the Feds.
He looked at me.
Then at the lenses still turning around him.
In the end he pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a heavy breath.
As if he'd aged years in a single sigh.
"Adriana."
His voice came out strained.
"For the sake of the Family's honor."
"Until this is settled."
"You'd best step back from your work for now."
When the words landed.
The whole corridor went terrifyingly quiet.
I stood where I was.
My face burning, raw.
But worse than the physical pain.
What chilled me more.
Was the way everyone looked at me in that moment.
Suspicion.
Doubt.
A relish in my downfall.
As if all the lives I'd fought to save over the years.
The wounded men I'd kept off the morgue slab.
The standing I'd earned in blood.
Counted for nothing against a few weightless words of slander.
