When Adriana stepped through the door of the Moretti estate, Vanessa was nestled against Lorenzo's side, playing lady of the house as she barked orders at the staff that had served the Family for thirty years.
Lorenzo heard the door and lifted his gaze toward Adriana.
"Starting today, Vanessa is the woman of this house. Everyone answers to her." His eyes settled on Adriana, cold as a blade left out in winter. "Including you."
His stare was ice. Not a trace of warmth. The signet ring on his finger turned once, slow and idle, the way it always did when he believed himself fully in control.
Because she'd kicked Vanessa's dog, he was using his so-called wound from the old hit as an excuse again, stripping her standing as the Don's wife and handing it to a courier who'd clawed her way up from another man's errands.
He expected her to rage. To lose control. To break down and then give in, the way she always had. He expected her to still care.
But she no longer wanted the name Moretti pinned to her chest like borrowed honor. And she no longer cared whether his memory loss was real.
Adriana said nothing. She turned and headed for the stairs.
Vanessa stepped into her path, eyes glittering with triumph and contempt.
"There's still so much I don't understand about running a house like this. I was hoping you could teach me, sis."
Before Adriana could respond, Vanessa grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the bar.
Adriana's custom coffee machine, the one she'd waited months to have shipped from Italy, had been wrecked beyond recognition.
Rage blazed through her. She wrenched her hand free.
"Who told you you could touch that?"
Vanessa only smiled, smug and unhurried, lifting a steaming cup from the counter.
"You still think you're the high-and-mighty wife of the Don? Lorenzo stopped loving you a long time ago. You're nothing." The words barely left her mouth before she hurled the coffee straight at Adriana.
Scalding liquid hit her neck and slid beneath her collar. Adriana flinched, her skin burning.
The bitter-sweet stench of coffee flooded her nostrils. Her stomach, already wrecked by morning sickness, revolted instantly. She clamped a hand over her mouth and doubled over, retching.
Everything in her stomach came up, all over Vanessa.
Vanessa froze for a few seconds, then let out a piercing scream.
Lorenzo came running. He found Adriana half-collapsed on the floor, dry-heaving, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes by sheer reflex.
His body moved before his mind caught up. He crossed the room and reached out to help her stand.
Instinct. The kind carved into bone. For a split second, he forgot he was supposed to remember nothing.
Vanessa watched him and felt her chest seize. She cranked up her sobbing.
"Lorenzo, I only asked her how to use the coffee machine, and she threw it at me and vomited on me." Her voice cracked into a pitiful whimper, the answer coming a beat too fast. "I know she doesn't like me. If she wants me gone, I'll go. But why does she have to humiliate me like this?"
Lorenzo's brow furrowed. The concern drained from his face, replaced by cold disgust. His hand left the ring entirely.
"Adriana, you never learn. I told you she's the woman of this house."
Adriana wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. She looked up at him, and when she spoke, her voice could have cut glass.
"The woman of this house? Whose name is on the alliance pact, Lorenzo? Hers?" She held his gaze without flinching. "Did you forget how to read along with everything else?"
Lorenzo went still. He had never seen this version of Adriana before.
Vanessa recovered first, her smile widening a fraction too far.
"Lorenzo, she's deliberately provoking you. She doesn't respect you at all."
That hit the nerve it was meant to. Fury swallowed whatever was left of Lorenzo's reason.
"Take her outside. She kneels for one hour and thinks about what she's done."
Two enforcers moved immediately, seizing Adriana by the arms. The other associates in the room found somewhere else to look, the way men do when the Don's word turns ugly.
She struggled against their grip, staring at Lorenzo's cold, indifferent face. It overlapped with the face in her memory, the one from before.
The Lorenzo who used to hold her like something precious. Who stayed at her bedside through the night when fever took her. Who noticed every small thing about her.
Who once whispered, in a moment so tender it ached: "Adriana, I'll love you until the day I die."
His love had been so brief.
Numbness and pain crashed through her in equal measure as the enforcers forced her to her knees on the stone outside the front door of the estate.
Then Adriana raised her voice, sharp and clear, aimed straight back into the house.
"Lorenzo Moretti. If you make me kneel out here, and your mother finds out how you've treated me, do you really think your little courier will live to see tomorrow?"
Her voice wasn't loud, but every word landed with absolute certainty.
Lorenzo's eyes narrowed. Carmela Moretti had always stood on Adriana's side.
And the Family's old rules left no room for a woman like Vanessa to set foot through that front door, let alone claim the house as her own. The matriarch had buried better women than her for less.
The air went still. They stared at each other, neither willing to look away.
