At least I was still breathing, and I had a new life ahead of me, a future no one had stolen yet.
I wanted to take my own car back to the estate, but Salvatore was the one carrying my bag. So I had no choice but to trail behind the three of them through the dark.
As we passed a hedge, Salvatore's voice cut through the night, impatient and low.
"Bianca, how much longer do we have to keep up this act? I can't stomach it anymore. Adriana's running wild now. Who knows what she's caught crawling into beds she shouldn't."
"She can't even tell a real heirloom from a fake. No wonder some old man talked her onto her back with a few pretty words. A woman like that, sitting at the head of the Valente table? The real family ring is only ever going on your finger, Bianca."
Bianca looked between the two of them, eyes glistening, the picture of a wounded saint. "Adriana's done terrible things, it's true. But she was good to me once. How can I just turn my back on her? If you won't do as I ask, I'll never speak to either of you again." Her gaze flicked downward, her lower lip trembling right on cue, though the tears never quite climbed into her eyes.
At that, the two heirs of the richest houses in the territory fell over themselves apologizing, frightened as soldiers caught skimming the take. They wanted nothing more than to grind me into the dirt and lift her to the heavens.
More than ten years of knowing each other, worth less than a handful of Bianca's words. I held back my tears and turned away.
In the endless night, I walked toward home with exhaustion dragging at every step.
When I reached the estate, my sprained ankle had swollen so badly it was unbearable to look at. Donna Genovese fretted over it, bringing out the old medicinal wine to rub into the skin, her hands working the way they had when I was small. I didn't want her worrying more than she already did, so I told her instead about the offer. About the Family that had taken an interest in me. About the place I'd been given.
She was startled, then radiant. "My Adriana, you'll make something of this name yet. I'm old now. You're the only one left who can hold the Genovese house together."
I nodded, tears standing in my eyes.
"After all these years, the Genovese name has cause to celebrate again. I'll throw a proper feast for you. We'll sit you before every Family in the territory." Her smiling face was exactly the one she'd worn when she sent me off to be married in my last life.
Back then she thought I'd found a good man, and her joy had been complete. But the shock of Lorenzo abandoning the union at the altar had broken her, and she'd died there at the wedding, with everyone watching.
Now that I had a second life, I would never let either of us walk that road again. She was old. I took the whole burden of the feast onto myself.
When word reached them, the two I'd grown up beside came of their own accord to help. They even brought the chocolate cake I'd loved as a child, an offering of appeasement laid at my feet.
"Adriana, you haven't answered a single message in days. Are you still angry about that night?"
"We never meant to side against you. We only worried you'd pick up bad habits. For men in our position, respect among the Families is everything."
I didn't forgive them. I simply let them stay and work. They owed me too much from a life they didn't remember. There was no balancing that ledger. All I wanted was to never lay eyes on either of them again after this was done.
After my parents were buried, the Genovese house had fallen from its place at the table, and no one came calling anymore. Now that I'd risen, it was the same as announcing to every Family that the Genovese line had an heir, that we were no longer a name to be stepped on at will.
So Donna Genovese set great weight on this feast and would not allow the smallest detail to go careless. She pressed her worn rosary between her palms more than once those days, her hands going still while everything around her rushed.
On the night of the feast, the powerful and the connected filled the hall, made men and their wives, capos from the old houses, all gathered under one roof.
Bianca entered too, in a gown far above her station, trailing in the wake of my two childhood companions. Her eyes moved over the glittering hall, over the chandeliers and the wine that cost more than her name was worth, and the jealousy in them was a living thing.
"Adriana has all the luck in the world."
"But what good is being born to a noble house, with all your cleverness? I still have a way to make you wish you'd never drawn breath."
The words had barely left her mouth when the great screen at the head of the hall lit up. My face filled it. Image after image. All of them showed me naked in bed, tangled with one man after another.
The room went still. A glass somewhere was set down too carefully. I couldn't breathe.
"Isn't that the firstborn of the Genovese house? She does run wild. That's what comes of a child raised with no parents to teach her."
"No wonder word on the street says she earned her place on her back. Seems it's all true."
