No island.
No red dress.
The heir’s chair instead.
Her mouth is controlled, but it remembers laughing. The ring on her finger sits like a lie. The bruise under her silk scarf lives like a fact. She sits like someone who learned to be still and chose not to be, shoulders square, chin steady, wrists bare, nothing to surrender and no interest in pretending.
If power had a heartbeat, hers would be the metronome.
If mercy needed a face, it would borrow her beautiful lips.
Isabella Valentine.
Taking the seat chosen for me, I keep my face quiet. The men I bring watch me the way they’ve learned to watch. The old hate hums through the floorboards.
While the Commission talks, I think of the cove and the circle of my palm at her waist. I think of the way she said she doesn’t belong to anyone, and I believe her again, which would be a mistake if belief is a weakness.
It doesn’t feel like one.
In the airless room, she smiles for peace.
Somewhere a clock ticks.
An order slips into my ear.
“End the truce by ending the Valentine heir.”
Chapter Five
Isabella
The oak-paneled room holding our truce is almost as old as the feud. Windows stretch to the tall ceilings so we can see the river from our seats like a warning. After all, that’s where my late mother and the Moretti Don rest for eternity. They say the current took them together.
Currents don’t take orders. Men do. Morettis say the Valentine Vendetta sent them to their watery graves. However, my family’s blood oath to erase the Morettis isn’t to blame.
The truth never matters. Our word being questioned does. The Valentine Vendetta is the law of my house, Moretti blood for Valentine blood. It’s been that way for one hundred years.
Valentine Week is the city’s yearly ceasefire under the Commission, so money moves, while routes are redrawn, and no one bleeds. I arrive early because heirs don’t rush. That’s what I’m told. It’s my first time at the table.
Men come with me like weather. Always there whether I want them or not. My father’s in a dark suit only he can wear without looking buried in it. The consigliere stands stiff as a board beside him gripping a folder. They’ve already decided what I’ll sign. We’ve rehearsed. This meeting is the show.
Polished Adrian is at my elbow to look like protection. He knows which camera to face and which smile to put on. Today he shows teeth but not intent.
The table’s long enough to stage a war without anyone ever standing. Chandeliers gleam overhead as if someone just scaled the ceilings to polish them. They sparkle like the diamond I wear.
There are rules here. Not written ones. In my world, rules are understood. Practiced. The head chair belongs to a man who’s never earned it but never lost it. My father. The right-hand seat belongs to the voice who’ll speak when the head performs dignity. My fiancé. The place opposite the doors belongs to the heir who must watch anyone who enters. That chair is mine.
It is now since my brother passed early last year, right after the truce.
Passed by the wrong Moretti, that is. Killed by a Moretti. Word on the street is that my brother fought hard but eventually took a bullet to the heart. With his face flashing before my eyes, I remind myself there’s no room for my broken heart at this meeting. No reason to question again why we haven’t moved to avenge our former heir all year. Our blood oath will have to wait until after Valentine Week.
A runner sets a leather folio in front of me and a pen I didn’t choose, like my brother would have. Little things were important to him. Like the glass to my right that sits a quarter inch closer to the edge than everyone else’s because someone knows I prefer water I can reach without looking. I channel my brother as I recall our training to notice what others miss.
I touch the folio with my fingertips and feel the raised seal press into my skin. The Valentine crest of swirling iron is a confinement if I stare at it long enough. I don’t dare laugh out loud. A cage with a single rose inside. The irony isn’t lost on me as Adrian pulls out my chair like a gentleman and bends close enough for me to get a whiff of the cologne he always wears. I never liked it. When my brother died, I said yes to him for my father’s sake.
“You look beautiful and powerful,” he says.
“I look like the heir,” I say. “That is the point.”
