Right before I finished school, my man of four years, Lorenzo Bianchi, told me he wanted to end it.
He handed me the deed to a townhouse, the keys to a Bentley, and eighteen million in clean cash, and thanked me for the four years.
I just stood there, wanting to know why we were ending anything at all.
But he only said, cold as a blade laid flat on a table, "Adriana Valente, for a man from a bloodline like mine, love and marriage are two separate accounts. I'm going home for a blood-alliance union. Understand?"
...
My man was being promised to another woman at a sit-down, and the bride wasn't me.
By the time I reached the alliance sit-down, Lorenzo was already up on the raised floor of the ballroom, under the eyes of every made man in the room.
He wore a hand-cut suit and obsidian cufflinks, more beautiful than any man had a right to be.
And the woman standing across from him looked to be barely four foot six, and heavy, her face crawling with greasy, glistening pimples that looked ready to burst at any moment.
My man was going to bind his blood to a woman like that?
Thinking back to last night, it felt like another lifetime.
Yesterday I'd come back to the townhouse from my day among ordinary people, and Lorenzo had pinned me down on the bed.
He bent over me and kissed me, his voice rough as gravel as he said, "Baby, tonight, don't treat me like a person."
And then it was as though he devoured me whole.
But when I woke up, he was already gone, no trace of him left.
His number was dead. Every account he'd ever kept, wiped clean, the way a soldier scrubs a place he was never supposed to be.
He'd vanished from my world all at once, and I had no time to brace for it.
Then his lawyer showed up at my door.
The lawyer came at noon.
He said Lorenzo had given specific instructions to come only at noon, so he wouldn't disturb my rest.
Then he handed me a document.
I read it, and I didn't understand.
It was a deed of gift, stating that Lorenzo was voluntarily handing me the townhouse, the Bentley, and the eighteen million in clean cash as tribute for four years at his side.
So he'd cut me loose out of nowhere, and then treated me like some kept woman and thrown laundered money at my feet?
But I wasn't short on money at all.
When Lorenzo and I first came together, I'd told him as much.
But he'd said, with the easy certainty of a man who'd never once glimpsed the real table, "However much you've got, cara, you're not sitting on what I am."
I hadn't bothered to argue. What could I do, when I loved him.
But everything had been fine. So why cut it off?
Last night, that cold, aloof man of mine had been so eager, so fierce, saying he loved me almost the entire night.
How could that turn into this?
I made myself calm down, and then, through the Valente channels no one in that room could imagine I owned, I quickly found out the truth.
And so I came to the sit-down.
I could tell Lorenzo wasn't happy. Was he being forced into this alliance with this woman?
"Give her a kiss!"
Just then someone called it out from the crowd of guests, I couldn't tell who.
And then I watched the woman reach out to take Lorenzo's hand.
Lorenzo instinctively stepped back, dodging her.
The woman wasn't pleased. Her thick lips flapped, spitting as she said, "Forgotten what you promised me already, this fast?"
Lorenzo's face went white, but he pressed his thumb flat against his knuckles and stepped forward anyway.
He must have been threatened. Someone had a hook in him.
I pushed my way out of the crowd at once and called toward him, "Lorenzo, if something's wrong, tell me. Don't put yourself through this!"
Every gaze in the room fell on me. Conversations died mid-sentence, the way they do when the wrong person speaks out of turn.
When Lorenzo saw me, a flicker of joy crossed those cold eyes, then in an instant it froze over with ice.
"Who's this bitch?"
The woman glared at me, her jeweled fingers rising to brush the diamonds at her throat. "You call my fiancé by name, awfully close, aren't you?"
I was about to say who I was, but Lorenzo cut me off.
His sharp brows drew together as he said, "She's just some pathetic hanger-on. Have someone throw her out, don't bother with her."
Hanger-on?
I could feel it, every gaze turned on me now full of contempt.
