The heavy oak door swung open before Camilla could speak another word.
I tapped the screen, ending the transmission and returning the telephone to my clutch as Salvatore stalked into the room.
He moved with a deliberate, unnerving grace, each step eating up the distance between us without a sound.
He threw a thick manila folder onto the mahogany table; it landed with a sharp crack of authority next to my hand.
"Sign it," he ordered.
I lowered my gaze to the document. It was a hush-money contract, a formal offer of one million dollars and a luxury penthouse in Miami in exchange for my permanent silence and exile.
I looked back up at him. "Did you even read Clause Seven?" I asked, my voice retaining its steady cadence.
"It is an order, Penelope," he growled. "Not a negotiation."
He stepped into my space, his shadow falling over me and plunging my side of the table into twilight.
He smelled of expensive cologne and the faint, metallic tang of gunpowder.
"You lack the soldiers, the money, and the power to survive a war with my Family," he warned, his voice a low vibration that I felt in the floorboards more than heard.
"You take the money. You vanish. Or I will make sure you disappear without a dime."
He withdrew his telephone, tapped the screen, and held the device inches from my face.
"I am loyal to Camilla," he stated. "This is my reality. Not some ancient piece of paper."
I looked at the screen. It was a photo of Salvatore and Camilla on a yacht; he was kissing her cheek, and she was smiling brightly at the camera.
But my eyes did not focus on their faces. My gaze locked onto the necklace resting against Camilla's collarbone.
It was a heavy, antique blood-ruby pendant set in tarnished gold. It was my mother's necklace-the very one she was wearing the day she died.
A sensation like ice water poured through my veins, chilling me to the marrow.
"Where did she get that necklace?" I demanded, my pulse beginning to hammer against my ribs.
Salvatore frowned, pulling the phone back slightly. "She inherited it from her grandmother," he said defensively.
I let out a short, humorless laugh. "Sofia's mother was a cocktail waitress in Atlantic City," I countered, my tone sharp with disdain. "She died with a mountain of casino debt. She did not own a seventeenth-century Sicilian blood-ruby."
Salvatore's jaw clenched as his patience snapped. His possessive fury flared, and the air in the room seemed to thicken, becoming heavy and hard to breathe.
"You are deranged," he accused, his voice rising. "You are so consumed by jealousy that you are making up lies about jewelry to ruin her."
Before I could answer, a disturbance broke out in the corridor. The door was thrown open, not by a guard, but by Camilla herself, who pushed her way into the room.
She looked entirely different from the venomous woman on the video call moments ago. She was trembling, with artfully placed tears coursing down her perfectly contoured face. And resting against her collarbone, catching the dim light of the room, was the very same blood-ruby pendant I had just seen in the photo.
She rushed straight into Salvatore's arms. "Sal," she sobbed, burying her face in his chest. "I was so scared. My father's men just found me. She locked me in a closet at the estate."
Salvatore wrapped his massive arms around her, his glare fixed on me over her head. "It's over," he whispered to her.
Camilla turned her head slightly to look at me. Where Salvatore couldn't see, her tears vanished.
She shot me a venomous glare and mouthed a word: Sign.
"I need to speak to my Capos," Salvatore said softly to Camilla. "Stay here. Do not let her near you."
He kissed the top of her head and stepped out of the room, leaving the door cracked open.
The second his shadow disappeared into the hallway, Camilla dropped the act completely.
She wiped her miraculously dry cheeks and sneered at me.
"You see that?" she gloated. "He eats out of my hand. Boss Pietro is arriving right now. He is going to clean up this mess and bury you."
She walked over to the table, tapping a perfectly manicured fingernail against the million-dollar contract.
"In the eyes of our Don, your existence is nothing but a nuisance. Sign it before they decide to just shoot you."
She reached into her designer clutch to pull out a compact mirror.
She examined her reflection, checking that the false tears had not disturbed her mascara, before snapping the compact shut with a sharp, definitive click.
"You have exactly ten minutes before my father officially erases you from this Syndicate," she whispered, her eyes gleaming with a toxic, triumphant joy.
"Enjoy your final moments as a Russo, Penelope. Because after today, you are nothing."
She turned on her heel and walked back toward the door, abandoning me to the cloying stillness of the room.
But I merely smiled, a cold, hollow expression that did not reach my eyes. I knew the truth about her fragile dominion, and it was only a matter of time before it all burned down.
