The wives clustered along the marble portico, their envy curdling beneath strings of borrowed pearls and the cold perfume of money that did not belong to them.
"They say Don Greco indulges his Donna in everything. Look at him now. The rumor was true after all."
"A matched pair, the two of them. Blood and beauty, the way the old Families used to be."
"Indeed. And to think some gutter creature had the nerve to crawl into their union and try to tear it apart."
"She raised her hand against Gemma herself. Against the Donna. That is a woman who does not know her rank in this world. Salvatore will settle the matter now. Let us see how long the little homewrecker stands once the Family answers her."
Their whispers slithered through the courtyard like smoke under a locked door, and from the heart of that murmuring circle a small shape broke loose. Nico came tearing across the obsidian flagstones, his polished little shoes clattering, and flung both arms around the man stepping down from the lead car of the motorcade.
"Papa!"
Salvatore knelt with the unhurried grace of a man who had learned, late and imperfectly, how powerful men were meant to move. He gathered the boy against his tailored chest and let the watching crowd see the tenderness of it, the performance of a doting father wearing a thousand-dollar suit he still did not quite believe was his.
"There's my boy. Your mother sent word that someone troubled you at the school. Is that so?"
Nico's mouth curled, his eyes narrowing to gleaming slits, the cruelty in them entirely on loan.
"Yeah. There was this little brat. When I hit her, she almost knocked me down."
He puffed his small chest, glancing sidelong toward Gemma the way he always did, hungry for the nod that gave his menace its borrowed shape. "But I taught her a real lesson, Papa. I cut her toe right off."
Salvatore pinched the boy's plump cheek and smiled, approval warming his face like sunlight on cold stone. "That's my blood. That's a Greco. You're going to be something feared in this Family, you understand me?"
He lowered his voice to the boy's ear, but pitched it just loud enough for the wives to drink in.
"From now on, if anyone dares to raise a hand to you, you hit them harder. As hard as you want. You don't worry about what comes after. Papa handles everything that comes after. Do you understand?"
Nico nodded, fierce and certain, then turned again for his mother's smile to confirm he had pleased the man. "I understand, Papa."
"Good boy."
The praise spent, Salvatore set the child down and rose to his full height, and for a heartbeat the courtyard held its breath the way courtyards do when a man who commands soldiers turns his attention to a single point in the crowd. He straightened the lapel of his jacket, smoothing the silk as though the cloth itself could vouch for who he had become, and looked to the woman at his side.
"Now," he said, his voice flat and proprietary, the voice of a Boss whose authority was as borrowed as his son's cruelty though he would never admit it, even in the dark of his own skull. "Show me who had the gall to lay hands on our son."
Gemma's fingers rose at once to the diamonds at her throat, pressing them as if the gems might testify to a name her bloodline never could. She turned, drawing him through the parting crowd of made men's wives, her heels striking the stone like little verdicts, and lifted one manicured finger toward the place where I knelt with my daughter pulled tight against my body.
"There, my love," she cried, loud enough for every whispering mouth in that courtyard to carry it home. "It's that shameless mother and her little brat. Right there."
Isabella's small hand found my sleeve and gripped it, and she pressed herself silent into my side, the way she always did when the world turned its teeth toward her.
