Violetta POV
Hours later, a maid dragged me into the main living room of the estate.
Gabriel sat in his great leather chair, his face a mask of shadow and danger. Serena leaned against his chest, her posture a study in delicate sorrow. Her eyes were red. She was crying, her tears catching the light as she dabbed them delicately with a silk handkerchief.
She told Gabriel she did not want to force this marriage on me. She played the innocent victim flawlessly, her voice a fragile whisper that threatened to break with a guilt she did not feel. She whispered that Bianca did not know the cartel rules, and she was terrified Bianca would offend the Lucchese bosses and get killed.
Gabriel ignored Serena's performance. His dark eyes were locked on the window, staring at the distant safehouse across the frost-covered grounds. He was waiting for my mother to storm in and save me, desperate for any sign of life from the woman who had walled him out with silence.
When night fell and the safehouse door never opened, Gabriel's jaw clenched. The muscles in his neck strained against the starched linen of his collar. His fury boiled over into a stillness that was more menacing than any rage.
He ordered his men to cut the power and water to the safehouse. He wanted to freeze my mother out, to break her will through privation.
That night, the biting winter air seeped through the cracks of my window at the safehouse. My fingers turned numb as I opened my wooden drawer and dug out my mother's copy of the mafia marriage certificate. I tore the heavy vellum into tiny pieces and threw them out the window, watching them scatter like dead ashes into the snow.
I was trying to protect her. If there was no certificate, there was no proof. And without proof, Gabriel could not erase her. He could rage and scream and tear the house apart, but he could not make her disappear from the Family records. It was all I could give her—a name he could not unmake.
