It just so happened that my brother had come from Emperor Bay that night, sent by our parents to talk sense into me, hoping I'd stop defying the family. Lorenzo arrived just in time to pull me out of a den where a group of men had been circling, looking to take a piece of a Valente daughter who'd wandered too far from her father's protection.
Who would have thought that when he brought me to a hotel to sleep it off, some hungry set of eyes would catch it on film?
No wonder Salvatore had gone strange after that night. Distant, watchful, though he still forced the old warmth into his voice when the crew was looking.
Turns out he'd been holding it in the whole time. He waited. He waited until I'd handed him the clients that mattered, until I'd quietly leaned on my family's name to grease the Commission and put him on the path to being made. Tonight, with the recognition ceremony a breath away, he finally chose to strike.
I was disappointed by his lack of trust in me.
Yet he was also the first man I had ever truly fallen for. I don't want us to drift apart because of a misunderstanding.
Even more, I didn't want my parents to learn that my first all-consuming love had died before it ever truly began. I had fled Emperor Bay to escape the alliance union they'd arranged for me, a marriage bargained between two families like a shipment of cargo.
I wanted to choose my own man, to stand beside someone as an equal, not be chained inside a loveless pact sealed in blood. But I'd never told a soul. Not even Salvatore.
I was afraid that if he learned I was a daughter of the Valente dynasty, the true power sitting silent beneath his rise, he would feel small, overwhelmed, crushed under the weight of it.
Since I was a girl, every man near me had only wanted me for the name I carried. I hated those calculated shows of devotion, those compliments with a knife hidden inside them. But Salvatore. When he looked at me, his eyes were filled with stars.
The memory of how beautiful things once were made me laugh, and once I started I couldn't stop.
"What are you laughing at?" Salvatore's brow drew tight, his voice thick with disdain. He tugged his tie straight, smoothed his lapel, the way he always did when the ground shifted under him. "How could you laugh at a time like this?"
I lifted my head and met his gaze head-on. "Do you really think I'm the kind of woman who sleeps her way to the top?"
"Then what else did you do?" A cold scoff. "You think there's anything left in you worth my respect?"
It felt like an invisible hand had clenched around my heart, squeezing so tight that even breathing turned to pain.
I drew a slow breath and spoke evenly. "The man in the photo. He's my brother."
"Your 'brother'?" Vittoria broke into laughter. Two fingers drifted to the base of her throat, resting there a moment before she recovered the smile. "You think we're fools? Passing off some sworn brother as blood? What, do you call every man you crawl into bed with 'brother'? I'll give you that much, it does add a little spice to the arrangement."
The laughter around me grew sharper. Someone whistled. In a room like this, laughter was permission, and permission ran downhill from the man at the top.
Salvatore looked at me with nothing but contempt. "Enough. Stop humiliating yourself. Take your papers and get out. From this moment, you and I are strangers. Cast out. No family will touch you."
I closed my fist around the letter, and inside there was nothing but a cold, hollow emptiness. For five years I'd buried my true name, played the low-level associate, working to build his crew as fast as any hand could.
Now, after I'd personally paved his road to the top of the ranks, he was ready to discard me like a tool worn smooth from use. I could stomach losing. What I couldn't stomach was being made a fool. I'd write off five years of my youth, spent on an ungrateful upstart who'd forgotten who fed him.
"Salvatore, you'll regret this."
My quiet murmur reached him, and he reacted as though I'd told the funniest joke in the city.
"Regret?" He let out a mocking laugh. "The only thing I regret is ever crossing paths with a faithless whore like you."
With that, he put out his hand toward Vittoria. The two traded a knowing look and walked hand in hand toward the center of the hall.
Only then did I see it. Salvatore's tailored suit and Vittoria's low-cut gown were a matched set, cut from the same designer's cloth. He raised their laced fingers high, his voice pitched loud and sure so it carried to every silent partner in the room.
"Tomorrow is the most important day in this Family's history. Tomorrow the Commission makes us. None of it would stand without the loyalty of everyone in this room. Let's keep rising together."
Thunderous applause broke across the hall, followed by wave after wave of cheers.
