Isabella POV
The words hung in the heavy, suffocating air of the corridor. Gina and Caitlin turned a sickly shade of ash, the last remnants of their confidence evaporating.
"A conversation?" Eleanor prompted, her voice dangerously low, her grip tightening on her silver wolf-headed cane.
I kept my gaze steady on my grandmother, ignoring the two trembling women on the floor. "Yes, Nonna. I heard Aunt Gina and Caitlin whispering outside my door. They were discussing what to do after my... unfortunate ruin tonight." I paused, letting the silence stretch until it was almost unbearable. "They planned to use my disgrace to rally the Elders and strip me of my birthright as the eldest daughter of the main branch."
"Liar!" Gina shrieked, her voice cracking as she scrambled forward. "She's a lying bitch! She's making it all up to save herself!"
"But that wasn't the worst part," I continued, my voice slicing through her hysteria like a cold blade. I turned my eyes briefly to Caterina Moretti, then back to Eleanor. "To secure Caitlin's marriage to Marco Moretti, they agreed to offer the Carson family's most profitable shipping company at the Chicago docks as her dowry. A gift to the Morettis, in exchange for their backing."
The corridor erupted. Not with sympathetic murmurs, but with sharp, collective gasps of pure revulsion. In our world, jealousy was a sin, but selling out your own blood's territory to a rival family? That was treason. A death sentence.
"She's crazy, Nonna! You can't believe her!" Caitlin sobbed hysterically, clawing at the carpet, her torn emerald dress making her look like a broken, pathetic doll.
I didn't even look at them. I turned my body fully toward Eleanor and bowed deeply. It was a gesture of absolute submission to the Matriarch, yet my voice carried the weight of an executioner.
"Nonna," I said, my tone ringing clear over their pathetic cries. "My father, the legendary Capo Liam Carson, died defending the honor of our name. His blood soaked the streets of Chicago so that we could stand here today. And now, women who share his blood are trying to use the very legacy he died for to buy favor with the enemies who killed our men."
I raised my head, meeting Eleanor's piercing eyes. "I beg you, as the Matriarch of the Carson family, tell me... did my father bleed for nothing?"
The silence that followed was absolute. The Outfit wives around us—women whose husbands and sons bled as Soldiers and Capos—stared at Gina and Caitlin with undisguised disgust. I had turned a petty scandal into a referendum on loyalty and blood. And I had won.
Eleanor’s face was carved from ice. She didn't look at the sobbing women at her feet. She looked only at me. For a fleeting second, I saw something new in her weathered eyes—not just approval, but a dark, complex reverence. She recognized the weapon I had become.
She lifted her silver wolf-headed cane and struck the floor. *Clack. Clack. Clack.*
The sound echoed like nails being driven into a coffin.
"From this day forward," Eleanor's voice boomed, cold and absolute, "Gina Gallo and her daughter Caitlin are no longer members of the Carson family. Their names are struck from our bloodline. They are stripped of everything and exiled. Any Carson who offers them aid will share their sentence."
Gina collapsed, a hollow wail tearing from her throat, while Caitlin simply stared into the void, her mind finally breaking under the weight of her ruin. The execution was complete. My Vendetta had claimed its first souls.
Eleanor slowly turned her imposing gaze away from the wreckage of her own family, her eyes locking onto the smirking face of Francesca Gallo and the pale, trembling form of Caterina Moretti. The Carson cleansing was done; now, it was time to address the audience.
