The sudden commotion drew every pair of eyes toward the iron gates.
The crowd that had been baying like dogs over spilled blood went silent, the kind of silence that falls in a room when the men at the door step aside for someone they fear. The associates' wives who had pinned me to the cold pavement let go at once, straightening their designer coats, smoothing their hair, turning as one toward the line of black cars rolling in past the school's wrought-iron arch.
Gemma drew her heel back from my cheek, the pressure of it lifting, her gaze pulled away from her triumph and fixed instead on the motorcade. The tires whispered over the wet stone like something patient and certain.
I pushed myself up, every bone in me screaming, and gathered Isabella against my body. Her small hand found my torn sleeve and gripped it, her face buried into my side, her whole body trembling without a single sound. She had learned that lesson too young, that crying only invites the next blow. I held her tighter and felt the warm seep of her ruined little boot against my hip.
Under the weight of every staring eye, a soldier in a dark suit stepped from the lead car and crossed to the rear door. He opened it with the bowed deference men reserve for one thing only, borrowed power they have decided to believe in.
Out stepped Salvatore, dressed in a tailored suit cut close as a blade, carrying himself with the polished charisma that turned heads the instant his shoe touched the ground. His handsome face, that distinguished air he wore like cologne, swept over the gathered parents and pulled their attention to him like a tide.
"Isn't that Mr. Greco?"
"It is, it's him. Dio, even the way he arrives, like a king coming to collect."
"And so handsome too. No wonder that shameless creature has been clinging to him so hard."
The envious murmurs rose and folded over one another, low and hungry, the whispering circle finding a new idol. And Gemma, sensing the shift in the room the way only the insecure can, glided forward to claim it. She slid her arm through Salvatore's and let her fingers rest at the necklace at her throat, touching the cold stones as if the gems could say what her name never could.
"Honey, what are you doing here?" she asked, her voice gone sweet as poisoned honey, her smile arranged for the audience.
Salvatore looked down at her with a loving smile, the practiced kind, and wet his lips before he answered, one hand drifting to straighten the lapel of a jacket that fit him perfectly. "Didn't you tell me you'd had a little trouble at the school? Of course I came. To stand behind you and our son."
Gemma batted her lashes up at him, drinking in the eyes of every wife and made man's woman who had ever doubted her place. "Really? So no matter who crosses me, you'll always be on my side?"
He didn't hesitate, and I watched him not hesitate, this man from the gutter who had been lifted into a name that was never his to carry. "Of course. You and our son are my treasures. Anyone who dares lay a hand on you will answer to me."
Seeing him squared and ready to draw his borrowed weight in her defense, Gemma glowed with pride, her chin lifting, her hand still pressed to the jewels at her throat as though they were a crown.
And I stood there in the cold with my daughter's blood drying against me, watching my husband promise his protection to another woman in front of half the Family.
