He hung up. Cold. No hesitation.
The silence that followed was absolute—the kind that settles over a room when a death sentence has been passed.
Seconds later, my phone buzzed. A photograph. A scanned document materialized on the screen, its edges crisp and damning.
An investment contract. My mother's name beside Piper's, bound together in ink and betrayal.
Bold letters in the center screamed at me like a confession beaten out of a dying man:
Investments carry risk. All losses due to personal judgment errors are the client's own responsibility.
My mother's signature sat at the bottom. Her fingerprint pressed into the paper like a blood oath she never understood she was making.
He'd been preparing for this. The Marconi Family's consigliere—that cold-eyed mouthpiece who'd buried a hundred sins beneath mountains of legal paperwork—was ready to crush me like I was nothing more than a rat scurrying too close to the Family's business.
Still, I went to the Marconi compound.
The elevator of their legitimate front—a towering monument of glass and steel that housed their import empire—carried me upward like a condemned woman ascending the gallows.
The doors slid open at the fifteenth floor, and there she stood.
Piper.
She was draped in custom Chanel, the fabric clinging to her like a second skin. Her handbag cost more than most soldiers earned in a year of wet work. And there, glittering on her wrist like a trophy ripped from a corpse—the princess bracelet.
My bracelet.
She looked like royalty. Like someone born into the inner circle, not a bastard daughter who'd clawed her way in through seduction and blood.
Her lips curled the moment our eyes met—a serpent's smile.
"Oh no, Anneliese..." she cooed, her voice dripping with poisoned honey. "You look awful. Guess it's true what they say—when a woman gets old, the bloom fades. No wonder Colino lost interest."
She tilted her head, feigning concern with the skill of a woman who'd learned to lie before she learned to walk.
"Still haven't buried your mother? Want me to help plan the funeral? I mean..." She pressed a manicured hand to her chest. "We are family, after all."
My hands curled into fists at my sides. Rage—white-hot and blinding—boiled up from somewhere deep in my chest until it threatened to burn me alive from the inside out.
"You knew it was a scam," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You knew. That was a con—a scheme that tricked my mother into giving up every cent she had saved. Every dollar she'd earned on her knees, scrubbing the Marconi floors."
Piper's expression shifted into wounded innocence, but the corner of her painted lips twitched with barely concealed amusement.
"How could you accuse me like that?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I was just trying to help. Your mother wanted to earn more for your wedding dowry. She came to me, Anneliese. What was I supposed to do—say no to that sweet old woman?"
My chest tightened like iron bands were being wrapped around my ribs. Blood rushed to my head, pounding in my ears like a war drum.
"Boy," Piper sneered, dropping the pretense like a mask she'd grown tired of wearing, "that old hag loved you like you were the whole world, didn't she?"
She leaned in close, her perfume cloying and expensive, her breath hot against my ear.
"One day," she whispered, "I stepped on Don Marconi's favorite peonies. On purpose. Crushed them right into the soil." Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "The head of household staff said he'd dock her three months' pay. Your mother begged. On her knees. Right there in the garden, with dirt under her fingernails and tears running down her face."
My vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single point—Piper's smiling face.
"I found out later she hadn't taken a day off in months," Piper continued, giggling like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Just to save money. For you. For your wedding to a man who was already sharing my bed."
She pulled back, her eyes glittering with malice.
"And when I told her to crawl through the garden like a dog?" Piper's smile widened. "She did it. Just like that. Hands and knees through the mud, while I watched."
My world crumbled.
All those times my mother had smiled and told me not to worry about a thing while I planned my wedding to Colino... all those times she'd insisted everything was fine, that the Marconis treated her well, that being in service to a powerful Family was an honor...
I never knew. I never knew what she had endured for my sake.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and something inside me snapped clean in two.
I raised my hand, eyes blazing with three years of suppressed rage.
"Piper, you're a monster."
But before my palm could even graze her cheek, she threw herself backward out of the elevator, crying out like a wounded animal as she clutched her unmarked face.
"Anneliese, I said I was sorry!" she sobbed, her voice carrying through the marble corridor with theatrical precision. "I even knelt to you, but you're still being so cruel—do you really want me dead that badly?!"
Employees—soldiers in expensive suits, associates who knew better than to interfere in Family business—turned to stare.
"If you want me dead so bad, then fine!" Piper staggered to her feet, swaying dramatically. "I'll die for your mother! I'll pay the blood debt myself!"
She lurched toward the wall as if to crack her own skull against the marble.
"Piper!"
A figure rushed forward from the corner of my vision—broad shoulders, expensive cologne, the familiar silhouette that had once meant safety and love.
Colino.
He caught her in his arms, pulling her against his chest like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.
Then he turned, and his shoulder slammed into me with the force of a man who'd learned violence at his father's knee.
I wasn't prepared.
My head whipped back, cracking against the elevator's brass railing with a sickening thud that echoed through my skull.
The world tilted on its axis.
Warm blood—my blood—trickled down the back of my neck, soaking into the collar of my dress.
Colino turned on me, his eyes bloodshot with rage. The same eyes that had once looked at me with tenderness. The same hands that had once cradled my face now curled into fists at his sides.
"Anneliese Giordano," he spat my name like a curse, "how dare you? Apologize to Piper. Now."
It was like she was his wife. His Donna. The woman who would stand beside him when he inherited his father's empire.
And me? Just some lunatic. Some hysterical servant's daughter who needed to be dealt with before she embarrassed the Family further.
Piper sobbed against his chest, her fingers clutching the lapels of his suit, her body trembling with manufactured terror.
"I know she's just hurt," she whimpered, pressing her tear-streaked face into the hollow of his throat. "I already said I'd pay for it. I'd take on every job I could—even the ones no one else wants. The dirty work. But she..." Her voice cracked beautifully. "She still hit me. And she cursed me—said I should drop dead."
Colino's arms tightened around her. His jaw clenched. His eyes—dark as the river where the Family dumped their problems—fixed on me with undisguised fury.
"Have I not compensated you enough?" he snapped, his voice carrying the weight of a man accustomed to being obeyed. "Look at yourself, Anneliese. You're just like your mother. Petty. Greedy. Always playing the victim, always looking for a handout."
He took a step toward me, and I could smell Piper's perfume clinging to his skin.
"You two deserved the punishment."
My breath caught in my throat like a blade had been pressed to my windpipe. The corridor spun around me, but I stood rooted to the blood-slicked marble, too stunned to move.
"Petty and greedy?" I whispered, staring at the man I'd loved—the man I'd been promised to since I was nineteen years old—like I was seeing him for the first time. "Is that really what you think of me? That seeking justice for my mother—a woman who died in your family's service—makes me some money-hungry lunatic?"
Tears blurred my vision, turning the world to watercolors. But I refused to let them fall. I would not give them the satisfaction.
Something flickered in Colino's expression when he saw me fighting to hold myself together. A shadow of the man he used to be. A ghost of whatever conscience still haunted him.
But the moment Piper whimpered against his chest—a soft, wounded sound designed to twist the knife—his expression hardened back into stone.
"I saw you try to hit her," he said flatly. "I don't care what your excuse is. I don't care what story you've convinced yourself is true."
He took another step forward, close enough that I could see the vein pulsing in his temple.
"This is the last time I'll say it. Apologize."
My heart clenched like it was being crushed in a vice—squeezed until there was nothing left but pain and the bitter taste of betrayal.
I looked at him. At the man who had promised to protect me. At the underboss who would inherit an empire built on blood and broken oaths.
At the stranger wearing my fiancé's face.
"And what if I don't?" I said coldly.
