“Because the Don is incapacitated.”
I glance at Giovanni. Then back at the man. “I’m aware of that glaring fact. I’m asking you why me. Why is someone else not equipped to handle this?”
He clears his throat. “Well… because there is no consigliere,” he adds.
That gives me pause. “No consigliere,” I repeat.
He nods. “Giovanni does not keep one.”
Of course he doesn’t. Control is easier when you are the only voice that matters.
“Then you should sit,” I say, gesturing to the chair. “And start explaining to me why the absence of a consigliere means this falls to me.”
By the end of that first day, I know more about the history of the Dragoni empire than I ever wanted to. By the end of the second, I know how it works.
Shipping lanes. Port authorities. Security firms that operate under ten different names. Real estate acquisitions timed to political pressure. Serious money that moves quietly, lands hard and shifts destinies.
The end of the third brings even more enlightenment. I know where Bellandi has been bleeding support. And by the fourth, I understand something that settles into my bones with terrifying clarity.
Salvatore Bellandi wasn’t determined to wipe me out because I was merely an inconvenience or a liability. It’s becauseLaFrantellanzaknew what I’m only just learning.
That in Giovanni’s absence, the reins do not pass to his lieutenants or even the highest trusted man in his hierarchy.
His power passes to me. His wife.
Because of blood and law and the simple fact that no one wants to test what happens when they cross the Dragoni wife while the Dragoni Don lies unconscious.
The fear in their eyes is not subtle.
It is respectful.
And it feeds something inside me I did not know existed.
On the fourth day, I sit at Giovanni’s bedside, my fingers tracing the back of his hand, my voice low as I tell him everything he cannot hear.
“I’m here, Giovanni. I did not run,” I tell him. “I did not fold. And if you wake up and yell at me, I will yell right back, because you don’t get to leave me with this and then pretend you are still the only one who can hold it.”
His fingers twitch.
The doctor tells me it is reflex.
I don’t believe him. I know my husband heard me.
On the morning of the fifth day, I stand at the window of the master suite in the Dragoni Estate and I look at my reflection in the glass, recognising myself only in fragments, in the set of my shoulders, in the steadiness of my gaze.
Giovanni Dragoni’s wife does not break. She learns, she adapts, and she retaliates.
When my phone rings and Isabella Bellandi’s name lights the screen again, my mouth curves into something sharp and deliberate.
This time, I don’t answer.
This time, I already have a plan.
19
LUCIA
Giovanni drifts in and out of consciousness, tormenting me when his lashes flutter now and then, and his fingers twitch against the sheets as if he is trying to hold onto something just beyond reach. And every time he stirs, my chest tightens with hope and dread tangled so closely together I can no longer tell them apart.
