The trace of guilt on Lorenzo's face vanished.
He pushed Vittoria behind him and looked at me, on guard. "Adriana, what are you doing? That's your sister."
I kept my eyes fixed on Vittoria. "You'd better keep that mouth clean."
Vittoria's face crumpled. "Enzo, don't let me come between the two of you. If my sister won't admit Matteo was faking his illness, I won't bring it up again."
I frowned and turned to Lorenzo. "You think Matteo's faking too?"
He said nothing.
He glanced around the room. No Matteo in sight.
He didn't seem to care. "Where'd you dump him off to this time?"
So he really didn't believe me.
Any time he'd bothered to come home, he would have seen the medicine and the medical charts piled on the table.
But he never came home. Not once.
Then I remembered how Matteo, once he knew he didn't have long, wanted the three of us to go to the seaside together, just once. One ordinary day, the sun on the water, both his parents beside him.
I went to Lorenzo and begged. I even got down on my knees on the marble.
In the end I was clutching the hem of his trousers, promising him that after this one time I would never cling to him again.
That I'd sever the union myself, and free him before the whole Family.
Back then he'd gone still for a moment, looking down at me from above.
There was something glad in his eyes, and something more complicated. "You mean that."
"Yes." I slowly closed my eyes, and the tears spilled over.
I was the one who found him by the river when I was small, and I begged my parents until they took him in.
From then on he was my brother.
My parents divorced when I was in middle school. The court gave Vittoria to my father.
Because I'd chased after him since I was little, I clung to the hem of his shirt and made him stay, to live with my mother and me.
That one thing I did, Lorenzo hated me for it for years.
He'd wanted to go with Vittoria.
Because of me, he could only watch as she left for the other side of the water.
Later my mother entrusted me to Lorenzo. She said only by placing me in the hands of a man with his standing could she die at peace.
Lorenzo was forced into a bare-bones union with me.
No family gathered, no witnesses, no blessing sworn before the Commission.
He said this was all I deserved.
Even on her deathbed my mother asked when we would swear the union properly, before the Family.
Lorenzo brushed the question aside.
Outside the room, his patience ran out completely. "It wasn't enough making your mother strong-arm me into taking you in? Now you want the union sworn before every Family too?"
I was about to defend myself.
Then he added, "Don't go hoping for things you have no business wanting. Vittoria is coming back."
"She wouldn't want a man who's already bound to another."
The place of the Don's wife, of course, was to be kept for the most precious person.
Because of me and our child, Vittoria kept refusing his offer to make her his own.
I was even willing to give him up.
So why wouldn't he spend that one last time with Matteo?
Fine, he didn't love me. But the boy was his son too.
How could he do that to Matteo?
I looked at Lorenzo, disappointed. Once I'd thought his features were beautiful, like something painted. Now I only found the sight of him repulsive.
Lorenzo was about to say something when Vittoria cut in. "Enzo, my foot hurts, and my face hurts so much. Can you check if it's swollen? I don't know if it'll ruin the feast tomorrow."
Lorenzo's attention snapped right back to her.
Vittoria let herself fall into his arms.
I'd put everything into that slap, and now a clear handprint stood out on her pale cheek.
Vittoria let the tears fall.
It broke Lorenzo's heart. He brushed them away with the gentle tip of his finger.
When we were young he'd been good to me too. When I fell, he'd help me up.
He'd wiped my tears like that too.
I couldn't even remember the last time he'd given me a kind look.
When Lorenzo turned to me, the tenderness was gone. Only ice was left. "Adriana, apologize to your sister."
I lifted my chin and straightened my back. "No."
Lorenzo never expected the day would come when I'd dare to talk back to him.
He'd started to hate me right around the time I was first falling in love with him.
Because I loved him, I was careful around him, small and quiet.
I held my heart out to him carefully, terrified he'd come to hate me.
But whatever I did, in his eyes it was wrong.
Nothing I did could ever measure up to Vittoria.
Lorenzo was only startled for a second before he carried Vittoria back to the couch.
I started for the door and heard him say, "Adriana, don't make me angry."
His soldiers stopped me and dragged me back to stand in front of the two of them. Neither of them looked at the men. In this house, hands that moved on a word from the Don were furniture.
Lorenzo sat with one leg crossed over the other, watching me at his leisure. Two fingers rested against the rim of the glass at his side. He did not lift it.
An unspoken weight pressed down over the whole room, the kind of quiet that fell just before something was decided.
"Apologize to Vittoria."
Vittoria threw me a taunting little smile, then looked at Lorenzo. "It's all right. My sister didn't mean it." Her fingers drifted up to the hollow of her throat, resting there a beat too long, the way they always did when she wanted him reminded of what she claimed she'd bled for him.
Lorenzo gazed at her with tenderness. "Vittoria, you're just too soft-hearted. You treat her like a sister, but she's never treated you like one."
Then his eyes went cold on me. "Everyone who hurts Vittoria pays it back double."
I remembered being cornered in an alley by older kids as a girl, shaken down for the coins in my pocket.
Lorenzo had come out of nowhere and beaten the one who kicked me half to death.
The man who once shielded me with everything he had now shielded someone else.
Maybe my refusal to bend had set him off.
Lorenzo meant to teach me a lesson.
He signaled the soldiers to force me down onto my knees on the cold floor in front of them.
Seeing my head lowered, his expression eased a little.
One of the men stepped forward and raised his hand at me.
Vittoria stopped him. "Enzo, she's still my sister. A man like him doesn't know his own strength. I'm afraid he'd hurt her."
"If she really needs to learn her lesson, I'll do it myself."
Lorenzo had no objection, of course.
Vittoria lifted her hand and slapped me twice across the face.
Her manicured nails cut a line of blood open on my cheek.
Vittoria turned to Lorenzo, looking distressed. "Enzo, what do I do? I hurt my sister."
Lorenzo let out a cold snort.
"She had it coming. Vittoria, you're just too kind. She hurt you first, and here you are worried about her."
The soldiers let go, and I dropped to the floor in a heap.
Lorenzo looked at me. "Adriana, you owe all of this to Vittoria. Apologize to her."
I owe her?
She was the one who slandered my Matteo first.
Lorenzo always took his side, right or wrong.
I curled my lips and let out a scornful laugh. "In your dreams."
"I hate you, Lorenzo."
When I looked at him, there was not a shred of feeling left in my eyes.
Only hatred, thick and heavy.
It made Lorenzo's brow knit.
"Adriana, as long as you behave, whatever you want, I can give it to you. Taking your son out to play, or the title of my wife before every Family."
Once I'd wanted so badly to be his wife in name, rightfully, sworn before the Commission.
But what did he do? He kept parading Vittoria at his side in public.
Every Family knew the Don was bound, and they assumed the woman was Vittoria.
Now I didn't want it anymore, and he was using it to threaten me, to bribe me, to make me give in.
I bore the sting on my face and looked him straight in the eye. "I don't need it anymore, Lorenzo. We're through."
Maybe because I'd loved him and depended on him so much before, he simply didn't believe I would ever sever what bound us.
He sneered. "What? No more playacting to beg me to take your son out?"
I caught a trace of contempt in his words.
Before I could speak, Vittoria did. "Sis, stop lying to Enzo. If Matteo really were dying, how would you be here all by yourself?"
I couldn't take it anymore. "Shut up. Neither of you has any right to bring up Matteo."
Vittoria put on the look of someone who'd been wounded. "I won't say another word. Sis, don't be angry with me."
Seeing how I treated Vittoria, Lorenzo was fully enraged now.
He gave a cold laugh and took out his phone to call his steward.
To make sure I heard, he put it on speaker. The whole room had gone still enough to hear the ringtone.
"Gennaro. Find out which hospital Adriana's son is in. Send word down the line. Stop his treatment."
Everything in his face said he had it all under control.
As if this would be enough to have me in his grip.
I gave a bleak little laugh.
On the other end, Gennaro was quiet for a moment, then spoke, hesitant. "Don Falcone. The little boy has already passed. The day after you disappeared."
