I hadn't expected Lorenzo to follow me to the restaurant with Gia trailing at his heel like a shadow he'd chosen to keep. The private room at the back of the club was set for a sit-down. Don Barone hadn't yet arrived, the head of the table still empty, and the two of them slid into the leather banquette across from me as though they'd been invited, as though this were their table and I the intruder.
For a long moment I said nothing. The candle between us threw its small light against the dark paneling, and I felt the old, familiar cold settle into my chest, the kind that came whenever Lorenzo made a decision that cost me and never noticed the price. My thumb found the bare skin where a ring should have sat, and I turned that empty finger once, slowly, before I caught myself doing it and went still.
Perplexed, and past the point of pretending otherwise, I said it plainly. "I have a sit-down arranged with Don Barone. This meeting is mine."
Lorenzo raised one dark brow. He was rolling the heavy signet ring around his finger, unhurried, the gold catching the candlelight. "Has Don Barone ever once said he didn't wish to see me?"
I fell silent. I did not push them out any further. Whatever I had become to him behind closed doors, in this world he was still the Don, and the room, the club, the very air we breathed all belonged to the Falcone name. To move against him here, before an allied boss, would have been to spit on the hierarchy that fed us all. So I swallowed it. I had grown very good at swallowing things.
When Don Barone finally arrived, the room seemed to draw itself upright around him. He was an old-blooded man, careful, the sort who measured a family's worth by the wine it poured and the silences it kept. He settled at the head of the table and, with a small gesture, instructed his own man to open a bottle he'd brought himself, something dark and expensive that breathed like smoke when the cork came free.
I frowned, and the memory rose unbidden, the way it always did when I least wanted it. The day I had gone to schedule the procedure after the accident. The physician's hands folded on the desk. His voice low and certain as he'd confirmed it with me again, and again, refusing to let me pretend I hadn't heard. After the miscarriage from the car, cara, your body was already damaged. That you carry again now is nothing short of a miracle. If you lose this one too, there may never be another chance. Do you understand me? Never.
I pressed my lips together. The glass was already being filled at my place, the wine bleeding red into crystal, and I gathered the words to decline it gently, to find some soft lie the table would accept without insult to our host.
Then Gia spoke.
She leaned forward with that bright, guileless smile she wore like borrowed silk, one hand drifting to rest against the flat of her stomach in a gesture she thought looked tender. "Oh, I've heard people say Adriana holds her wine better than any man at the table. Today I finally get to see it for myself!" Her eyes shone with a girl's admiration, wide and innocent and utterly, deliberately empty.
I looked at her without warmth. "Who told you that?"
Her smile froze on her face. The color of it drained just slightly, and her gaze cut sideways to Lorenzo, seeking the hand that always caught her when she fell. "Did I... did I say something wrong again?"
He reached over and smoothed her hair, the way a man gentles a favored animal, before he turned to me. And when he turned to me his face had gone to stone, the affection stripped clean off it. His voice dropped into that cold register I knew the shape of by heart, the one he saved for when he meant to make me small in front of company.
"Adriana. It's one glass of wine." A pause, weighted, the signet ring turning once more. "You're not a frightened girl anymore. Stop being so shy."
Something inside me went to ice.
I held his cold gaze across the candle. Around us the room had gone quiet in that particular way rooms do when men who deal in silence sense a fault line opening beneath the table. Don Barone's soldier stilled with the bottle in his hand. The old man himself watched with hooded, patient eyes, saying nothing, missing nothing.
My thumb pressed against my empty finger. I felt the ghost of the ring I no longer wore, the vow I had kept for five years in a marriage no one at this table knew existed, the years I had spent brokering the alliances that built his empire from the shadows so that he could sit here and command me to drink poison for the sake of his pride.
I stopped turning my finger. The halt of it was a small, final thing, and only I knew what it meant.
I forced my mouth into the shape of a smile. And I said it, word for word, slow and clear enough that not one man at the table could later claim he hadn't heard.
"Don Falcone. I can't drink." A breath. "Because I'm carrying a child."
The room froze.
Even the candle seemed to hold its flame still. Don Barone did not move. His soldier did not pour. For one long, ringing heartbeat the only sound was the faint tick of my own pulse in my ears, and I watched the words land on Lorenzo's face and saw something move there that he could not fully hide, some flicker fast as a struck match, gone before I could name it.
Gia recovered first. She always did. The shock behind her eyes was there and then folded neatly away, and she rose to her feet with a rush of warmth, lifting her glass toward me. "Congratulations, Adriana! Oh, congratulations, truly!"
She brought the rim toward her lips.
Lorenzo's hand shot out and caught her wrist before the wine could touch her mouth. "Gia. You're pregnant too. You can't drink." His voice had softened for her, gone protective, urgent in a way it had not been for me in years.
And for once, the girl did not obey.
She pressed her lips together, and her free hand fluttered up to her stomach again, too quick this time, cradling nothing. "No. I want to drink." Her eyes glistened, wet and wide, sweeping the table to be sure the room was watching. "Ever since I came to Duskmire, I've done nothing but make trouble for you without meaning to. I've hurt you, Adriana, and I never wanted to." She lifted the glass higher, her voice trembling on the edge of tears. "So let this one be my apology. Please. Let me drink to you."
