The Vitiello estate was ablaze, lit up like a fortress preparing for a coronation.
Crystal chandeliers wept light from the ancient trees, and the driveway was a serpent of Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
I wore black.
Not a mourning dress. A weapon.
It was silk, floor-length, backless, with a slit that sliced up to my hip.
It was a dress that didn't beg for attention; I commanded it.
Marco met me at the entrance.
He wore a tuxedo, looking handsome in that superficial way that used to make my knees weak.
Now, he just looked like a liar in expensive packaging.
"You look... dangerous," he said, gripping my elbow a little too hard.
I wrenched my arm away.
"I look like a wife, Marco. Try to look like a husband."
We walked into the ballroom.
The air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume and old money.
Heads turned.
They always did.
We were the golden couple.
The financial brain and the muscle.
But the whispers started immediately, like the hiss of a lit fuse.
I followed the line of sight of the Consigliere's wife.
There, standing near the champagne tower, was Sienna.
She was wearing red.
A bright, vulgar scarlet that clashed violently with the understated elegance of the room.
And she was visibly pregnant.
Her hands cradled a bump that looked to be about five months along.
She wasn't hiding it.
She was brandishing it.
Marco stiffened beside me.
"I told her to stay in the back," he muttered, more to himself than to me.
I watched as Nonna Vitiello, the matriarch who had made my life a living hell for failing to conceive, walked toward Sienna.
My breath hitched in my throat.
Nonna would throw her out.
She had to.
This was a violation of everything the Family stood for.
But Nonna didn't throw her out.
She reached out and touched Sienna's stomach with a reverence she had never shown me.
Then, she unclasped the heavy emerald brooch from her own shawl-the brooch that was supposed to go to the mother of the first great-grandson.
She pinned it onto Sienna's red dress.
The room went dead silent.
It was a public declaration.
Elara was out.
The breeder was in.
I felt the eyes of three hundred people bore into me.
Pity.
Derision.
Scorn.
I looked at Marco.
"Do something," I whispered.
He wouldn't meet my eyes.
"It's a boy, Elara," he whispered back, his voice hollow. "I needed a son. You couldn't give me one."
The betrayal hit me harder than a bullet.
He had sanctioned this.
He had allowed his grandmother to crown his mistress in front of me.
I looked at Sienna.
She was smirking at me, stroking the emerald brooch.
She thought she had won.
She thought she was the Queen because she carried a pawn.
I didn't cry.
I didn't scream.
I reached into my clutch and pulled out my phone.
I dialed the number I had saved earlier.
It rang once.
"I'm ready," I said into the phone.
Dante's voice was dark and smooth on the other end, like velvet wrapped around a blade.
"Look up to the balcony."
I looked up.
In the shadows of the upper mezzanine, uninvited and terrifying, stood Dante Moretti.
He raised a glass of bourbon to me.
I turned to Marco.
He was sweating, watching Sienna.
"Marco," I said softly.
He looked at me, annoyed.
"What?"
"Our marriage is dead," I said.
I didn't wait for his reaction.
I turned on my heel and walked out of the ballroom, leaving the Vitiello dynasty to rot in its own hypocrisy.
