Salvatore Mancini, the retired patriarch, the man who once sat at the Commission table before gambling debts and a failed turf war gutted his family's name, turned his face away. He studied the far wall as though the peeling wallpaper held the secrets of his lost empire.
Donna Agata reached for my hand, her grip soft and useless. "Camilla, dear. Rosalia and Enzo have known each other since they were children. They have so much history, so much to catch up on. It only makes sense for them to travel together. Just bear with it this once. We'll all meet at the villa."
Nicoletta, fifteen years old and draped across the settee like she owned it, didn't even look up from her phone. "Rosalia has a delicate constitution. There's no way she could survive that kind of drive. You, on the other hand." She flicked her gaze toward me, a dismissive sweep from head to toe. "You're strong. Built like a soldier. You can handle it."
I laughed. The sound came out bitter and hollow, echoing off the marble floors I had paid for.
"Who is actually part of this family? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like Rosalia Vitale is your real daughter-in-law."
Enzo's expression darkened. "It's just a drive. It's not a death sentence. Rosalia is practically one of us. It's only right we make sure she's comfortable. Can't you show a little grace? Set an example for the household?"
The doorbell rang.
Nicoletta sprang from the settee with more energy than I had seen from her in months and ran to the front entrance. She pulled the heavy oak door open, and there stood Rosalia Vitale, framed in the evening light like a saint in a gilded alcove. Two oversized leather bags sat at her feet.
"Rosalia! You're here!" Nicoletta seized the handles of both bags and dragged them inside, her voice bright with the kind of enthusiasm she had never once directed at me. "I've been waiting for you all day!"
She threw her arm around Rosalia's waist and pulled her close, cheek to cheek, as though welcoming home a long-lost sister.
"Oh, Rosalia, I missed you so much. If only you hadn't left the country when things got bad, you could have married my brother. We'd all be real family by now."
Donna Agata rose from her chair and crossed the room. She took Rosalia's hands in both of hers, clasping them like a woman greeting a returning queen.
"Exactly. I always thought you and Enzo were meant for each other. In my heart, I've always seen you as my true daughter-in-law." Her eyes glistened. Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. "No one else could ever compare."
They said this openly. In my presence. In the house I had purchased. Surrounded by the furniture I had bought, beneath the chandelier I had restored, in a compound kept running by Ferrante money laundered through Ferrante fronts.
Not a hint of shame.
Something inside me went cold. Not the sharp cold of anger, but the deep, settled cold of a woman who had finally stopped pretending the fire would ever warm her.
Rosalia Vitale and Enzo Mancini had been childhood sweethearts in the old neighborhood. Everyone knew it. But when the Mancini family crumbled, when Salvatore's gambling debts and botched turf war left them half a million dollars in the hole to creditors who did not accept apologies, Rosalia's family had fled. The Vitales vanished overnight, running from the heat, abandoning the Mancinis to their ruin without a backward glance.
It was my father, Don Ferrante, who had brokered the salvation. He absorbed the Mancini blood debt, all five hundred thousand dollars of it, and sealed the alliance the only way the old ways permitted: with a marriage. I became Camilla Mancini in name, though I never stopped being a Ferrante in blood.
I had given everything to this family.
Salvatore and Donna Agata's health had been failing for years. I managed their medications, their doctors, their daily needs. I had taken Nicoletta under my wing when she was ten years old, a wild, undisciplined child with no prospects. I enrolled her in a private academy. I drove her to school every morning and picked her up every afternoon. I sat beside her while she studied, attended every parent-teacher meeting, bought her clothes and books and anything she pointed at. For five years I raised that girl. I was her sister-in-law in name, but I had been more mother to her than Donna Agata ever was.
