Her breath comes faster.
“I would’ve married him, if you hadn’t turned up like a—” She stops her vitriol, caught between venting her spleen and fear of retaliation. But it only lasts for a moment. “If you had not takenhim, I would be his wife by now. We would have ruled together. We would have been unstoppable.”
The words crack with envy and something far more personal.
Instead she?—
She stops short as one of the men steps forward and strikes her across the face, not brutal, not excessive, just enough to silence her and remind her where she stands.
She gasps. For a moment she’s stunned.
Then the tears come.
Ugly and humiliating.
I hide a flinch and flick a look at the capo. No more.
He nods and steps back as Isabella breaks down sobbing, shoulders shaking, mascara streaking, the image of composed Bellandi perfection dissolving into something small and raw.
I roll my eyes. “Compose yourself,” I tell her flatly. “This performance does not move me.”
She looks up, mascara smeared, rage simmering beneath the tears. “You think you’ve won,” she snarls. “My father will burn this house to the ground.”
I step back, turning away as if she has already exhausted her usefulness.
“You will tell me everything,” I say over my shoulder. “Every plan, every ally, every whispered conversation you’ve had with him in the last six months.”
I pause at the door.
“And you will not lie,” I add. “Because I know how close you are, and because if you do, I will stop threatening what you treasure most and start removing it.”
I glance back at her, my gaze sweeping her face slowly, deliberately.
“Take a moment,” I finish. “When I return, I expect something more useful than tears.”
The door closes behind me.
Giovanni
I waketo light and sound and the low, relentless hum of machines, and the first thing I feel is pain, deep, sharp, unmistakable, followed immediately by fear so sudden it steals what little breath I have.
Lucia.
My head turns sluggishly, heavy as if it does not quite belong to me yet, and for a fractured second I expect the worst. I expect absence. I expect loss.
Then I see her.
She’s standing there, close enough that I could reach her if my body would cooperate, unhurt, upright, very much alive. She looks tired and furious and entirely herself, and the relief that hits me is violent enough to leave me dizzy.
“Fuck,” I breathe, my voice rough, scraped raw by tubes and disuse.
She’s at my side instantly, one hand pressing flat against my chest as if to anchor me to the bed, the other reaching for the monitor with practised ease that tells me she’s been doing this longer than I would like.
“Easy,” she tells me. “You are not allowed to die. I have too much to yell at you for.”
Even now, she threatens me. My mouth curves despite myself.
“You okay?” I manage, every word dragged out of my lungs.
