Serena POV
Jessica stepped closer, the sharp click of her heels on the marble floor a sound of unnatural prominence.
She taunted me to pay, threatening to have Grant deliver me to the local constabulary on his payroll.
She wanted me to rot in a holding cell, and did not trouble herself to hide it.
She pulled a cigarette from Grant's silver case and lit it, her movements deliberately slow.
She took a deep drag and exhaled a plume of smoke into my face.
The acrid smell burned my eyes, but the sting was nothing to the fire that ignited in my veins.
My hand was halfway raised when Grant barked an order.
Two of his men stepped in. They grabbed my shoulders and shoved me back with a rough, practiced economy of motion.
I stumbled, my heels scraping on the polished floor, and caught my balance against the edge of a table.
Grant scolded me, his tone thick with a false disappointment.
He claimed I only liked to dish out humiliation but couldn't take it when the tables were turned.
I locked my eyes onto Grant, and whatever warmth they may have once held for him was gone, replaced by the cold promise of a reckoning.
He had no idea what he was doing.
The Caldwell Famiglia's explosive three-year rise to power was not his doing; it was a path I had paved for him, stone by bloody stone, from the shadows.
I had originally planned to use tonight's gathering to finally reveal my true bloodline.
I was going to tell him I am the heir to the Vance Famiglia, the undisputed apex of the Northern Syndicates. I had rehearsed the words a hundred times. I had imagined the look on his face—shock, then awe, then gratitude for the three years I had spent building his kingdom from the shadows, waiting for him to become the man my father would have wanted me to marry. Instead, he had spent those three years becoming the man my father had warned me about.
Max had warned me too, years ago—Maxwell Stone, the only friend from my old life who knew where I had gone. "He won't pass your test," Max had said. I had laughed and told him he was just jealous. I should have listened.
I forced my breathing to steady, and asked Grant one final time.
I asked if he was truly dead set on forcing me to leave this restaurant in disgrace.
Grant sneered, his expression hardening. He confirmed his trap was not merely for show.
Emboldened by the Soldiers holding me back, Jessica stepped forward.
She balled her hand into a fist and drove it into my stomach.
I gasped, the air knocked from my lungs, and doubled over.
She stood over me and offered two choices.
I could be thrown in a cell with the worst scum in the city, or I could eat a piece of raw steak off the floor and crawl out the door like a dog.
I straightened slowly, a sharp pain radiating from my belly.
I kept my fists clenched at my sides.
I stared blankly at Grant and spoke a warning into the silence.
I told him that if this is his choice, the utter bankruptcy and destruction of the Caldwell Famiglia will be on his head.
Jessica burst into laughter, a sharp sound that pierced the heavy air.
The surrounding mobsters joined in, their chuckles echoing in the room.
They mocked me like I was a patient from a madhouse, suffering delusions of grandeur.
They thought it was hilarious that a civilian wife was pretending to be hidden mafia royalty.
Grant, his face a mask of disgust at my defiance, picked up a plate of food from the nearest table and hurled it at me.
The ceramic shattered against my shins.
He berated me for my empty bluffs, telling me to worry about my own survival instead of making threats.
The manager approached with three of his enforcers.
He coldly demanded my method of payment.
I swept my gaze across the room until my eyes settled on a familiar Associate, a woman with whom I had conducted secret business in the past.
I walked straight toward her, my back rigid.
The woman shrank back in her chair.
She stammered that she couldn't pay my debt and cross the Caldwells.
I told her calmly that I did not want her money. I leaned down and whispered that if she did not hand over her telephone, I would see to it that Grant learned of the offshore accounts she had been skimming.
The crowd laughed at my act, finding my desperate scramble entertaining.
Grant glanced down at the Patek Philippe on his wrist. The second hand swept past the twelve, then the one, then the two. "Thirty minutes," he said, his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder, at the men in the back who were already loosening their ties. He thought he was giving me a deadline for payment. He had no idea he had just set the countdown on his own empire.
