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His muscles are rock hard, cords of steel vibrating with lethal fury, but the moment my fingers touch his skin, he stills.

"Let me, husband," I say quietly.

Romeo looks down at me, his dark eyes searching my face. Slowly, with a visible effort of restraint, he lowers himself back into his chair, his large hand coming down to rest flat over mine on the table.

I turn my head toward Donna Carmela, tilting my chin so that the taper candles illuminate every silver line of scar tissue running across my cheekbones and temples.

"I may not see your face, Donna Carmela," I say, my voice ringing clear and steady off the vaulted ceiling. "But I can hear the terror in your voice."

A sharp gasp leaves Bianca's lips. Donna Carmela's posture stiffens into stone.

"Terror?" Carmela echoes coldly.

"Yes," I continue, leaning forward, resting both forearms on the table. "You are terrified that the world your late husband built is slipping away. You wanted a meek Sicilian girl from an allied family who would sit in the corner, produce heirs, and look away while the men fought for the ports."

I tap the emerald-cut stone on my left hand against the table, the metallic clink echoing like a gavel.

"I am Daniel O'Connor's daughter," I state with ruthless, unapologetic pride. "I grew up on the docks where men get gutted for looking at cargo the wrong way.” I tilt my head toward Bianca, then back to the matriarch. "Your son did not marry a pet, Donna Carmela. He married an executioner. I control fifty percent of the northern shipping routes through my brother Jamie. I negotiated fifteen percent of Don Russo's profits in Castelmola yesterday with Sofia guarding my feet. If you think my blindness makes me weak, invite your friends from Palermo to challenge my position. See how long their tongues stay in their mouths."

Silence hangs over the dining room, absolute and suffocating.

Sofia lets out a single, deep, approving thud of her tail against my shoe.

Romeo's chest heaves with a dark, silent laugh beside me. His fingers lace through mine, his thumb rubbing roughly over my scarred palm, his pride in me radiating through his skin like a furnace.

Donna Carmela stares at me across the flickering candles. The rigid disdain in her features slowly fractures, replaced by something ancient, cold, and begrudgingly respectful.

She picks up her crystal glass, tilting the dark red wine toward me.

"It seems," the matriarch murmurs, her lips curving into the faintest hint of a smirk, "that Daniel O'Connor raised a wolf after all."

"I was raised by wolves, Donna Carmela," I reply, lifting my own glass with a steady hand. "And now I hunt with them."

Romeo clinks his glass against mine, his midnight eyes burning with unholy, possessive worship.

"Questa nostra cosa," Romeo rumbles, his voice carrying the authority of an emperor who has found his empress.

"This thing of ours," I whisper back, drinking the dark wine, knowing that this house, this empire, and this man are now irrevocably mine.

After the last toast, the older men linger with cigars and talk of tariffs as if blood were just another line item. I sit still and listen. Blindness has made me good at that. They think I cannot track who leans in and who goes quiet when Romeo's name turns sharp.

I can.

I file every voice. The ones that say "Donna" with respect. The ones that say it like a joke are not brave enough to finish. When I reach for my glass, Sofia shifts with me, a black warning at my heel.

Romeo's hand finds my knee under the table. Not a claim for the room. A question. I cover his fingers with mine and squeeze once.

We leave them with their wine. The war will not wait for dessert.

In the corridor, away from the cigars, I stop him with two fingers on his cuff.

"They will test me," I say. "Not with guns first. With manners. With women like Gianna. With little slights they think a blind girl will miss."

"Then we answer manners with manners," Romeo says. "And slights with graves."

"I don't need graves for every insult," I scoff.

"No," he agrees, lifting my knuckles to his mouth. "You need one example so loud; the rest remember how to speak to you. Tomorrow we walk Taormina in daylight. Let the island see you eating pastry on my arm. Let them decide if they feel brave."