Panic flickered through Lorenzo Falcone's eyes, those eyes that were always so controlled, the same eyes men in this city learned never to meet for too long.
"Gemma was beside herself over the club, so I took her out to settle her nerves. She had a few too many, and..."
His tone softened a fraction.
"Anyway, forget about that. I'll be at the next appointment with you. I promise."
Again. The same routine.
A flimsy excuse to wave me off, then something sweet to smooth it over, as if none of it ever happened.
But Lorenzo, you will never need to come to another appointment with me.
"Don't bother. Let's sever it. All of it."
He froze for a second, then his face twisted with anger.
"Adriana, is this one of your games? You spent too long collecting other people's dirt, and now you turn everything into a sit-down. I told you it was an accident. Do you have to drag the whole famiglia into it?"
"And let's be honest. You're pushing thirty, you're carrying my child, and you gave up your own standing to marry into this bloodline. You're nothing now without the name I gave you. Who else would have you besides me?"
"I bleed for this Family every single day, and I don't come home to find you picking fights over nothing."
He moved toward the door.
Passing the entryway, his gaze snagged on the corner of a document poking out of my bag.
The words were perfectly legible. Death certificate.
Lorenzo turned back, confused.
"Who died?"
He reached for the paper, about to draw it out and read it.
But his phone rang. Gemma's voice came through, small and choked with tears.
"Lorenzo, something's wrong at the club, the books, the customers, I can't handle all of it at once."
"It's all going to fall apart, isn't it? I'm so scared..."
Lorenzo's face went taut with worry.
"Don't cry. I'm on my way."
And just like that, he left. Didn't look back once.
Didn't even lock his study, the one room in the estate he never liked me setting foot in.
Something pulled me inside. Then something under the desk cut right through me.
That year, I'd been a made man's daughter with standing of my own, sent to gather what I could on the old Don who was stepping down from the head of an allied Family.
But the old man was proud and stubborn. He turned me away at his door.
Days of running between territories caught up with me, and I went lightheaded and faint. I collapsed in the garden of his social club.
It was Lorenzo who found me, who lifted me up. He told me the old Don was set in his ways and would never bend.
I'd hung my head, defeated. Then the next second, something sweet was pressed past my lips. A tangerine candy.
Lorenzo gave me a playful wink.
"But I admire anyone who takes the work seriously. So how about this. Bring your questions to me instead."
I found out later that he was the youngest man ever to head the Falcone bloodline. They called him the Surgeon, for how clean his work was.
Countless others had tried and failed to get an audience with the brilliant young Don. He'd made an exception only for me.
That was how Lorenzo and I began.
Later, we both grew busier and busier. One evening he looked at me, difficulty in his eyes.
"Adriana, I know making your own name in this thing of ours is your dream."
"But the old ones in the Family need looking after. Could you step back from the work? I swear I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you."
And I knew just as well that becoming the most feared Don in the city was his dream.
So I gave in.
I didn't vanish entirely. I let go of my own standing and took the quiet work, the logistics, the moving of cargo through allied ports, because at least that way I stayed close to the only world I'd ever loved.
On so many sleepless nights, I'd sit under the lamp and run my thumb over the dossier I'd built in my old life, the proof that I had once been someone in my own right.
Every time Lorenzo caught me doing it, guilt would flood his face, and he'd promise me again that he'd be good to me.
Now that same dossier, the one I'd treasured more than almost anything, was shoved under the corner of his desk to keep it from wobbling.
I opened his safe with Gemma's birthday.
On top was a thick manila envelope.
Inside, photographs. All kinds.
The two of them embracing. Kissing. Walking hand in hand along a beach.
Beneath the photos, receipts. An apartment he'd bought Gemma. The cash that had opened her nightclub. The renovations.
The place bled money every single month, and still he covered the gap.
