I gave my in-laws a monthly allowance of ten thousand dollars. I handled every household expense, every meal, every errand. I ran the legitimate fronts, the restaurants and the import-export operations, that generated the tribute keeping the Mancini name alive. One hundred thousand dollars a month, laundered clean through Ferrante channels. I was the financial backbone of an empire that existed only because I held it together.
I never felt like a daughter-in-law. I felt like a servant. A servant who paid her own wages and still wasn't permitted to sit at the table.
And despite all of it, despite every dollar and every hour and every sacrifice scraped from the marrow of my loyalty, they still treated me as less than an outsider.
Rosalia crossed the room toward me. Her steps were unhurried, her smile polished to a shine that didn't reach her eyes. She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume, something floral and cheap beneath the pretension.
"I'm sorry, Camilla." Her voice dripped with a sweetness so manufactured it could have come off an assembly line. "If I hadn't decided to join at the last minute, you wouldn't have lost your seat in the convoy. Honestly, I almost skipped the whole thing when I heard there were no spots left. But Enzo insisted he'd handle it. I had no idea he'd make you take the long road." She pressed a hand to her chest in mock sympathy. "I even offered to take the drive myself, but Enzo wouldn't hear of it. He was so worried about me traveling alone for that long. So I suppose I should thank you for taking the inconvenience."
Nicoletta hooked her arm through Rosalia's and leaned against her shoulder. "Exactly. Can you imagine Rosalia on some back road for thirty-six hours? All kinds of people out there. If some lowlife targeted a girl like her, what would we do?" She looked at me, and her lip curled with something that lived in the cruel space between amusement and contempt. "Camilla, on the other hand, has that look about her. Like a soldier. She'd scare them off before they got within ten feet."
The two of them dissolved into laughter, bright and careless, their voices ringing through the foyer like bells in an empty cathedral.
Enzo must have seen the fury settling across my face, because his tone softened. A calculated retreat, not an apology.
"Look. I know this arrangement isn't ideal. But it's the best solution we have." He paused, reaching for something he thought would placate me. "Last week you were eyeing that bag at the boutique on Fifth. Why don't you go ahead and get it?"
I held out my hand, palm up. "Fine. Five thousand."
His expression curdled. "Five thousand? I already said you could get it. Now you want me to pay for it too? Don't push your luck."
I let my hand drop. A smile crossed my face, thin and sharp as a stiletto.
"Since when do I need your permission to spend my own money, Enzo? Tell me. How much do you bring in each month?"
The flush hit his face like a slap. His jaw tightened. His eyes cut away from mine.
"That's not fair," he muttered.
It was perfectly fair.
Enzo Mancini earned three thousand dollars a month from minor protection rackets, pocket change that barely covered his cigarettes and his vanity. I generated one hundred thousand a month through the Ferrante-controlled fronts and operations I managed single-handedly. His salary didn't cover his own expenses. I had been funding this household, this family, this entire charade of a crime dynasty from the very beginning.
When we married, there was no dowry. No gift from the Mancini side. Nothing. I had absorbed the five hundred thousand dollar blood debt, added thirty thousand as a wedding tribute, and purchased the compound we lived in with Ferrante money. Every comfort they enjoyed, every meal on the table, every dollar in their pockets, every thread of respectability still clinging to the Mancini name, all of it came from me.
If they loved Rosalia Vitale so much, if she was their true daughter-in-law, their old neighborhood darling, their precious returning queen, then they could have her.
Let her fund the operation. Let her run the fronts. Let her keep the Feds at bay and the creditors satisfied and the household fed.
Let them see how long the Mancini name survived on Vitale money.
