"We can keep you under our protection, but four years isn't enough. A thing like this takes a lifetime!"
A few young women passing the social club glanced at me with envy in their eyes. There was no ripple in my heart.
In my last life, the four of us answered to the same house. To earn my place at the table, I worked harder than any soldier under the Lombardi banner, took every job, sat at every meeting. And in the end, my share of the take and my made position were quietly handed off, traded away for Bianca.
There was word on the street, too, that I'd earned my standing on my back, that I'd given myself to the men above me to climb. For four whole years I was frozen out, cut from every room, made to eat alone.
Back then, both of them swore they would stand at my shoulder and keep me safe. I didn't learn until I was dead that they were the ones who set the whole thing in motion. Through countless nights of turning over in the dark, I cried until the windows went grey. They used my suffering to put a smile on their beloved Bianca's face.
Seeing that I had gone quiet, Bianca spoke up, the sweetness in her voice gone thin and sour.
"Adriana has all the luck. Born to a name everyone still bows to, born beautiful, with two men who'd burn the city down for her. I never got a life like that. If Adriana hadn't taken me in, I'd have nothing, no roof, no name, nothing."
The words landed exactly where she'd aimed them. The two of them ached for her at once. "Bianca, don't talk like that. You're beautiful. You're worth more than this. There's a future waiting for you, a bright one. When the time comes I'll have my father put you over one of our front operations, a clean office, your own people under you."
"No, Bianca, come to me instead. I'll give you a higher place, a better cut. Whatever you want, it's yours."
The two of them went back and forth over her like dogs over a bone. I couldn't help but feeling sad.
After all the years we'd known each other, neither of them had ever made me a promise like that, never put me first the way they were putting her first now. It was true, then. Affection you put on for show could never stand against the kind that runs in the blood.
When I turned to go, Lorenzo caught the change in me. He took my hand, guilt sitting heavy behind his smile. "Adriana, don't read into it. We're good to Bianca because she's your friend. That's all."
Salvatore ruffled my hair like I was a child. "Don't think so hard about it. The hard part's over, you've passed. Come out for a drive with us. We put something together for you."
I nodded and didn't argue. I was leaving this place soon anyway. I wanted one last look at the city where we'd grown up together.
When we reached the garage, Lorenzo and Salvatore both rushed to put Bianca in the passenger seat.
Bianca looked at me, the picture of reluctance. "Isn't that seat only ever Adriana's? If I sit there, she'll be upset."
Lorenzo pressed her down into the seat before she could finish. "She doesn't deserve it. She won't mind. She's got the best temper of anyone."
Salvatore shot him a hard look, the irritation plain on his face, and slammed the car door.
It wasn't until the engine turned over that the two of them realized I hadn't gotten in. The windows came down. They looked at each other, fumbling for an explanation, and finding none that would hold.
So I said it for them. "It's fine. I'll take my own car."
Hearing that, they both let out a breath of relief, though something in how easily I'd said it caught them off guard.
"Adriana." Lorenzo started to call after me.
I rolled the window up before he could finish, unwilling to sit through another one of their lies. But the streets we passed still pulled the old memories loose, one after another.
The three of us had grown up side by side, the way children of allied houses do, promised to one another before any of us could choose. From the time we were small, both of them chased after me, both of them swore they wanted me. Then my parents were taken in an accident, and the whole great Genovese name came down to just my grandmother and me, the two of us holding the line alone.
