At the Family's table,Gianna,the adopted daughter the Castellanos had taken in,pushed the heiress of the Moretti Family down the marble stairs.The Morettis sent word that night,and the word was not a request.They wanted someone handed over.
Gripping Adriana's hands tightly,the Donna pleaded,her voice trembling,"Gianna didn't mean it.She's terrified right now,crying so hard that her eyes are red."
Before Adriana could process her words,her mother added,"Adriana,since you're Gianna's sister,you should go to the Morettis and take her punishment for her."
Salvatore,Adriana's twin brother and a made man under the Castellano name,came into the kitchen just as their mother finished speaking.Despite the same blood in his veins,his words were devoid of compassion.
"Exactly.The Morettis are known across every territory for what they do to people who cross them.Father and I went to their estate and all but knelt on their floor,and they wouldn't bend.Five days,that's all they gave us,to hand someone over.If Gianna goes,who knows what they'll do to her?She wouldn't survive."
Even Adriana's childhood betrothed,the man bound to her by the old Fontaine pact,urged her,"If you're willing to take the punishment for Gianna,I'll honor the alliance and marry you at once."
Left with no choice,Adriana went to the Morettis as they wished.But they soon came back,begging her to return.
—
Back at the Castellano estate,everything had come apart.
In the kitchen,Adriana was carefully laying out the family's breakfast for the next morning.She was whipping cream with slow,even strokes when her mother came through the door,her eyes red and swollen from weeping.
Adriana froze,her hands trembling.The bowl of cream slipped from her grasp and struck the floor in a white splatter.Two fingers rose to her right ear,the deaf one,pressing there as if she'd missed some word that would make all of this make sense.
A girl from the household staff stood near the doorway,the corner of her mouth curling at the scene,her eyes glinting with quiet pleasure.
Every Family that mattered knew what the Morettis were.They had come back from a distant territory and risen fast,their hand in every business worth owning,their reach long enough to touch any throne in the city.For Gianna to put their heiress on the ground at a gathering full of witnesses was the same as signing her own death warrant.
Salvatore came into the kitchen just as their mother finished speaking.Despite the same blood between them,his words were devoid of compassion.
"Exactly.The Morettis are known across every territory for what they do to people who cross them.Father and I went and all but knelt on their floor,and they wouldn't bend.Five days,that's all they gave us.If Gianna goes,who knows what they'll do to her?She wouldn't survive."
Adriana's heart sank.So Gianna couldn't endure it,but she could.If she was sent in the girl's place and the Morettis learned the truth,their wrath might cost her life.Yet her own family seemed entirely indifferent to that possibility.
Adriana stared at her mother and her brother in disbelief.Were these not the people meant to love her without condition?They were her own blood.
She remembered her childhood clearly.The way her mother would cradle her,stroking her hair,whispering,"Mama loves Adriana the most.You'll always be Mama's little treasure."
That love vanished the year her mother lost the child she had carried so long.The grief of losing that unborn heir changed her mother completely.She stopped smiling at Adriana the soft way she once had,and spent her days weeping over the small clothes she had sewn in advance for a baby who never drew breath.
Later,the Underboss who had married into the Castellano name,the man called Vito Romano,brought home a little girl from an orphanage.Everyone said how strangely she resembled the second child who had died at birth.Her mother said it too.And so Gianna was formally taken in as the consolation daughter of the Castellano Family.The Donna treated her like something rare and precious,cherished her as if she were the air in the room.Gianna mended her mother's broken mind,and in doing so took every measure of love that had once belonged to Adriana.
At first Adriana held no resentment.If Gianna could ease her mother's pain,it was a price worth paying.
But one night changed everything.
One evening Gianna failed to come home after her lessons.The Castellanos turned every soldier and every contact loose to find her.Her mother was beyond consoling,pacing the halls and sobbing until Gianna limped through the door late that night.
The moment she crossed the threshold,Gianna threw herself into the Donna's arms,tears streaming down her face as she cried,"Did I do something wrong?"
