The nerve of that man.
The Falcone family had been formidable once, generations ago. Old blood, old territory, old respect. By now the name was nothing but gilded rot, a hollow shell dressed up in faded glory. If it hadn't been for the childhood betrothal tying them to the Morettis, if not for the Moretti family's tribute flow and protection routes keeping their rackets solvent, the Falcone name would have vanished from the city's inner circle long ago.
And yet Damian still had the audacity to want it all. Both women. Both fortunes.
What a joke.
My father laughed, the kind of laugh that came from pure, white-hot fury. The signet ring on his right hand stopped moving. "The Falcones have enjoyed a few good years and already forgotten who pulled them out of the gutter?"
Isabella Falcone hurried forward through the crowd, her expression tight with forced composure. Two of the Falcone soldiers near the door shifted on their feet but didn't follow her. They knew better than to step between two families at a moment like this.
"Now, now, let's not say things we don't mean," she said, her tone practiced and diplomatic. "There's so much to manage with a wedding. Damian has been running himself ragged for weeks. He simply lost his head for a moment."
She spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "It's all a misunderstanding. We'll sort it out."
Our family had always been cautious when it came to marriage alliances. A full month before the wedding, my parents had hired a private investigator to look into Damian.
The night before the ceremony, the investigator delivered a stack of photographs. Damian and Adriana. Together. Intimately.
I had been shocked. Furious. But more than anything, I couldn't believe it.
Then I stumbled across that viral post online.
The fog lifted. Damian wasn't just cheating. He was planning to ride the Moretti name to the top, and once he'd squeezed every last drop of value from us, he'd engineer our family's ruin.
I would never let that happen.
My mother let out a sharp, derisive laugh. The rosary was wound so tight around her fingers that her knuckles had gone white, but her voice didn't waver. "Mrs. Falcone, do you take us for fools?"
"Bianca has lived under the same roof as your son since she was ten years old. They've known each other for over a decade. You're telling me he was too tired to recognize his own bride?"
Adriana scrambled to throw on a robe and dropped to her knees in front of everyone, tears streaming down her face like rain on white petals. Her fingers drifted to the base of her throat.
"Mom, this is all my fault," she sobbed. "Bianca overslept, and I was terrified our family would be humiliated, so I put on the wedding dress myself. I was only trying to help."
She turned to look at me, her voice cracking with every word.
"Bianca, please. I was wrong. But it's done now. I've already married Damian. If you keep making a scene, you'll only drag the Moretti name through the mud. Even if you don't care about me, don't you care about the family that raised you?"
Her eyes were rimmed red, her expression the picture of wounded innocence, as if she were the one who'd been wronged. As if the filthy affair with her sister's fiancé had nothing to do with her.
And somehow, I was the one threatening the family's reputation by demanding justice.
That was when the private investigator I'd already contacted arrived. He walked straight to my father and handed him a stack of photographs. The room went quiet. Not the polite quiet of a pause in conversation. The quiet that settles over a back room when evidence hits the table.
"Don Moretti, I'm afraid this situation is more complicated than it appears."
My father opened the envelope. Inside were the same explicit photos I'd already seen.
Every single image showed them in some degrading position, shameless and brazen, without a shred of decency between them.
My father's face turned a deep, mottled red. He slammed the photographs down onto the bed.
"What does the Falcone family have to say for itself now?"
"Mrs. Falcone, if your son wanted the Moretti family's adopted daughter, he could have said so outright. There was no need to humiliate my daughter on her wedding day!"
"The alliance is over. The Morettis are pulling every cent out of Falcone holdings. Every front. Every route. Every dime of tribute support."
The moment those words left his mouth, the color drained from Isabella's face. One gloved hand twitched at her side, but she didn't reach for the fingers. Not yet.
Without Moretti capital, the Falcone operation would collapse entirely. Nothing would be left but a mountain of debt and territory they couldn't hold.
Isabella whipped around and slapped Damian hard across the face. "Look at what you've done!"
Then she jabbed a finger at Adriana. "Someone get this tramp out of my sight! Throw her out!"
Damian pressed a hand to his stinging cheek. His gaze cut toward me, vicious and seething, as though he wanted to tear me apart.
In his eyes, I wasn't the victim. I was the villain who'd ruined his wedding and turned his mother against him.
He pulled Adriana behind his back and squared his jaw, staring his mother down with open defiance.
