For seven years, I had been in a secret blood-bound arrangement with my brother’s sworn friend, Dominic Moretti. A Valente daughter and a rival Don, bound in the dark, hidden from every Family that would have torn the peace apart over it.
One night, after the wine had gone down too easy, he looked at me with that lazy, dangerous smirk and said, “Adriana, I’ll find you a better man. Stop clinging to me, okay?”
I replied calmly and obediently, “Alright.”
It was because, in a past life, I had refused his suggestion and insisted on binding myself to him for good. After our pact was sealed, Dominic ignored me, deliberately distanced himself, and made me feel invisible.
Even when I was eight months pregnant and bleeding out after the car had been run off the road, he was sitting in a private box with his heartbroken Bianca, the Falcone girl, listening to her favorite band.
It was only then I realized he was someone else’s salvation, but he was never meant to be mine.
—
When I said “alright,” Dominic froze in place. He hadn’t expected me to agree so readily.
The dim light of the private lounge cast soft shadows over the leather and the low gleam of cut crystal. His handsome face carried an unusual flush, but his eyes stayed clear, showing no sign of the wine at all.
I sat composedly, my posture graceful, a faint smile on my lips as I looked at him.
In that instant the laziness drained out of him. Dominic straightened in his chair, and the gold signet ring on his finger caught the light as his hand went still on it. “Adriana, did you hear what I just said?”
I nodded. “I heard you clearly.”
In the old days, whenever he said something like this, I would pout, act playful, and beg him not to bring it up again.
But now my emotions were as calm as still water, as if I were merely a spectator watching a scene unfold, untouched and unmoved.
“Adriana, you...”
Before he could finish, my brother Lorenzo came back in from the hall. He entered with a teasing grin, the Underboss of the Valente Family wearing it like a man with no enemies in the room. “Guess who I just saw out there?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lorenzo went on, “Your old flame. Drunk off her feet, getting walked into another lounge by some of her people—”
Before he could finish, Dominic shot up from his seat and strode out. A moment later the sound of commotion and shattering glass echoed down the hallway, the kind of noise that, in our world, made the soldiers near the door reach for what sat under their jackets.
I stayed in my seat, unmoved, eating the peeled tangerine slices from the fruit platter.
Dominic liked fruit but hated peeling it. Every time, I would carefully peel it for him and set it in front of him, and only then would he take a few bites.
Lorenzo often teased me about it. “You’re too good to him. Why don’t I ever get treated like that by my own blood? Don’t tell me you’re sweet on him.”
Many times I was tempted to reveal what was between Dominic and me.
But Dominic would always gently pat my head and speak first. “Maybe, in Adriana’s eyes, I’m more of a brother to her than you are. A little sister spoiling her big brother. You have a problem with that, Lorenzo?”
Over time, I understood his intentions. He didn’t want a single soul to know.
So I kept my silence too.
For seven years, not one person knew what tied us together.
Now Lorenzo stood by the door, watching the chaos spill out into the hall, waiting for the right moment to step in. He cracked the knuckles of one hand against his palm, slow, the patience in him beginning to thin.
Glancing back at me, still calmly eating fruit, he teased, “Adriana, your precious Dominic just got himself into a brawl. Aren’t you going to help him?”
I swallowed the last slice of tangerine and shook my head. “My arms are too thin, my legs too weak. I’d only get in the way.”
At that Lorenzo raised an eyebrow, said nothing more, and went out to handle it himself.
I stayed in the lounge a long while, long enough for the noise outside to die down. Only then did I rise and walk out.
The moment I stepped into the hallway, I saw Dominic carefully holding another woman in his arms. His old flame and the Falcone daughter, Bianca.
Bianca was drunk, her body soft as if it had no bones in it, leaning her whole weight against him.
Dominic didn’t push her away. He held her tightly, as if he were afraid she might slip from his hands.
