Seven Years Lost, A Lifetime of Vengeance

There was an unwritten law among the ruling families of Harbor Bay, older than any of the men who enforced it.

When a Don brought home a new woman and meant to seat her at his side, the one she was replacing had to draw the Matriarch's Jade Ring from her own finger, in front of every made man and every painted wife in the room, and slide it onto the new woman's hand herself. A surrender performed in public. A transfer of respect, witnessed, so that no one could later claim it had been stolen rather than given.

The night Salvatore Gilberti brought Vittoria Greco home, every soldier's wife and every capo's mistress in the territory was waiting for me to set fire to the house with my bare hands.

I had stood at Salvatore's side for seven years. For that ring, I had knelt three days and three nights on the cold stone of the Gilberti chapel, the family saints staring down at me while my knees went numb and my spine forgot how to be straight. I had taken a blade meant for him, once, in a back room that still smelled of gun oil when I closed my eyes. The scar from it ran pale and uneven along my forearm.

Everyone in that hall was certain I would never give up my place without spilling blood for it.

But when Vittoria crossed the floor toward me in couture worth more than a soldier's life, all wide eyes and trembling lower lip, and held out her slender hand, palm up, waiting I didn't make a scene.

I pressed my thumb once against the old scar on my forearm, the way I always did when I swallowed something I refused to let anyone see. Then I slid the warm jade from my finger, the stone still carrying the heat of my own skin, and set it against hers without a tremor.

Salvatore stood a few feet away, swirling a glass of dark vintage, the firelight catching the satisfaction in his eyes. He looked at me the way a man looks at a dog that has finally stopped pulling at its chain.

"Adriana Castellano." He let my name roll out slow, savoring it. "You've finally learned your place."

I lowered my gaze to my bare finger, to the faint band of paler skin where the ring had lived for seven years. I said nothing.

What Salvatore didn't know was this.

A month ago, every memory the years had stolen from me had come flooding back, all at once, in the dark, like a tide returning to a shore it had abandoned.

I was the true-born daughter of the Castellano Family. The oldest, the deepest-rooted, the most feared crime dynasty in all of Harbor Bay. Missing for seven years. Mourned. Searched for by men who do not stop searching.

In three days, my eldest brother's armored motorcade would roll into Gilberti territory to carry me home, and not one corrupt official in this city would dare so much as glance at the plates.

——

The Gilberti estate glittered that evening like something poured from a treasure chest and left to harden. The grand hall was thick with silk gowns and tailored suits, with the low hum of conversation conducted by people who all knew exactly how much each other was worth and exactly how little it would take to end them. Crystal threw light across the obsidian floor. Somewhere a string quartet played, soft enough that the music never quite reached the corners.

Vittoria Greco lifted her hand into the chandelier glow, turning the Matriarch's Jade Ring this way and that for the circle of wives gathered around her. Her fingers found the gold band a half-beat too soon, twisting it before anyone had even asked to see, as though she could not quite trust it to stay.

A ripple of soft gasps moved through the crowd. Then came the glances, pitying and amused in equal measure, all of them sliding toward the corner where I stood alone with an untouched glass in my hand.

Salvatore had taken the seat at the head of the long table, the place reserved for the man who owned the room and everyone breathing in it. Every so often his gaze drifted to me, checking, the way a hand drifts to the grip of a weapon to be sure it is still there.

When Vittoria had soaked up enough admiration to satisfy her, she plucked a champagne flute from a passing associate's tray and drifted toward me across the marble, her heels clicking out each unhurried step.

Her eyes dropped to my throat.

There, resting against my collarbone, hung an extraordinarily rare pink diamond, the kind of stone that surfaces once in a generation. Three years ago, on my birthday, Salvatore had laid eighty million in laundered cash on the table at a private auction and walked out with it before any other Family in the room could blink.