"The Genovese house is truly finished. They let their firstborn become some capo's whore and a plaything for the Families."
I had stood inside this kind of ridicule twice before, in the life that came before this one. Once was my wedding.
Lorenzo had walked away from the blood-bound union in front of every house in the territory, all for Bianca, and the shame of it put my grandmother in her grave.
It made me and the Genovese name a joke whispered across every social club in the city.
The other time was my funeral. Before my body was cold in the ground, Salvatore couldn't wait to offer Bianca a union of his own, right there among the mourners. It made my whole life a punchline.
Remembering that other life, I turned in a panic to look at my grandmother. She was breathing too fast, her eyes gone red as they fixed on the photo thrown up across the wall of the feast hall.
"My Adriana, she would never do such a thing!"
Seeing the state of her, my heart skipped a beat, and I begged the men around me to help me get her to a safehouse, somewhere our people could see to her. But they all stepped back, every one of them, afraid that standing near a dirtied woman like me might stain their own names.
In the end it was the two of them who came forward out of the crowd. Lorenzo took the wheel himself, and Salvatore and I held my grandmother upright between us and ran her to the Family's guarded infirmary.
"You brought her in time. Any later and I don't think we'd have kept her breathing," the doctor said.
I thanked him quickly. Then I stayed at the foot of my grandmother's bed and went back through the feast hall's cameras. There she was, exactly as I knew she'd be. Bianca, in the footage, swapping the images out herself. Those photos, every last one, were fake. Stitched together. Insurance built out of nothing.
I took the wire to call it in, to drag the proof to the only people who could end her. But the two of them stopped me. "It was only a joke. Do you have to make a sit-down out of it? You understand you'll destroy Bianca, doing this?"
I went still, and then it came out of me as a roar. "And me? My grandmother nearly died. She wasn't afraid of destroying me, of burying the entire Genovese name?"
Salvatore shoved Bianca behind him and pushed me back hard. His right hand had curled slowly into a fist, the knuckles gone white.
"Are you finished, Adriana? Your grandmother's still alive and breathing, isn't she? Besides, flies don't land on a clean egg. You must have done something shameful first, or word like this wouldn't be on the street about you."
The words couldn't reach my heart anymore.
I shoved the two of them away, numb.
Lorenzo caught my wrist, his expression turning to something secretive. "Adriana, don't make a fool of yourself. You know the weight the Valente and Mondello houses carry between them. No man in this territory would dare take your side at any table."
Seeing that I still wouldn't let it go, his grip began to tighten. He laughed, a half-beat too late, his thumb dragging hard across his knuckles, the smile staying on long after the warmth had left his eyes.
"Don't forget. Your grandmother is still lying in that bed. One word from me and the doctor walks away. I'll count to three. If you don't hand me the wire, I'll have someone pull the machine that's keeping her breathing."
He counted in front of me, slow and even.
"Three."
"Two."
"I was wrong!" I dropped to my knees, the tears coming down my face.
I didn't dare. I didn't dare gamble my grandmother's life.
Salvatore snatched the phone from my hand and crushed it underfoot.
The falling fragments scratched across my skin.
He looked down at me, cold. "As long as we're standing here, you will never touch Bianca again."
I stayed collapsed on the floor until the two of them had gone, and only then did the pain spread through my chest. Two lifetimes of swallowed grievance finally broke loose, and I wept until there was nothing left in me. The promises sworn in our youth were fake. The bond we were raised inside was fake. Only the wound was real.
I don't know how long it was before I made my way back to the infirmary like something dead. I was afraid Lorenzo and Salvatore might come back and do something, so I stayed at my grandmother's side for days.
In all that time, only Bianca kept her messages coming. The two of them had taken her traveling, she said. Bungee jumping. Every single thing she and I had once promised each other and never managed to do.
I blocked her number.
I lifted my head and saw two men standing at the foot of my grandmother's bed. They greeted me, smiling, with the easy confidence of men who answered to something far larger than this city.
"Adriana, we're under-doctors sent down by the Syndicate. Rest easy. While you're away, your grandmother's safety is the Family's word, and the Family keeps its word."
The shock of it told me it was time. I returned to the Genovese estate and threw out every last thing tied to those two. Then I boarded the plane without once looking back.
Lorenzo and Salvatore were never going to hold me up. I would rely on no one but myself to earn a future worth something, for my grandmother and for the Genovese name.
