Chapter 2

Gemma stood frozen in place, her head dropping low, her shoulders starting to shake.

I hurried over and pushed the other children back from her, then crossed to Lorenzo. "Gemma is your daughter, Lorenzo. Can't you see how badly she wants you to play the games with her?"

Lorenzo frowned at me. "Chiara scraped her knee. She needs looking after. I can't leave."

Rosalind stepped in at once, her voice soft as silk over a blade. "Don't take it to heart, Adriana Vitale. Chiara's still little. Whoever spends the days with her, that's the one she thinks of as her papa."

"Lorenzo comes by every weekend. In her heart she already treats him like a father. Truly, he might as well be her own blood, don't you think?"

"I just wasn't as fortunate as you, marrying a good man like my brother..."

By the end her gaze flicked once to the side, testing the faces around her, and only then did her eyes go faintly red at the rims.

Lorenzo smoothed a hand over Rosalind's hair, then turned his face toward me and said low, "Show a little understanding. It's just children. Don't make it bigger than it is."

Before I could get a single word out, laughter and shrieks broke out behind me again.

I turned. Gemma was hemmed in by three or four children.

She'd fallen back onto the ground, the hem of her flowered dress smudged with dirt.

A pudgy little boy jabbed a finger at her face and shouted, "Liar! You don't even have a papa! And you were trying to steal Chiara's papa. Aren't you ashamed?"

Gemma sat there on the ground, fat tears crashing down.

She stretched her arms toward Lorenzo. "Daddy! Daddy, come here! Tell them you're my daddy! Say it, Daddy, please..."

One of her small fists was clenched tight around the little strawberry hairclip, knuckles white.

Chiara clung to Lorenzo's neck and would not let go.

Lorenzo took one step forward.

Behind him, Rosalind's eyes glistened. "Lorenzo... if you go over and admit it now, Chiara's going to be so hurt."

"You're the one who's spent every holiday, every birthday with her. She already sees you as her father..."

"It's all my fault. I couldn't find her a good father..."

When she finished, Lorenzo drew his outstretched foot back after all.

He turned his back to me and gathered Chiara closer. "Don't cry, Chiara. Don't worry, Papa's not going anywhere. Does your leg still hurt?"

Gemma's sobbing warped and cracked, then slowly sank quieter.

And the children's mockery only grew louder around her.

I cut fast through that ring of children, crouched down, and lifted Gemma off the ground.

Her tiny hands gripped my collar, her whole face buried against my chest, her tears soaking through my shirt.

She hiccupped through the crying. "Mommy... is Daddy really not going to want us anymore?"

I carried her toward the edge of the yard, past the ones who still watched, and did not slow for a single one of them.

I bent my head and kissed the top of hers. "No. It's that Mommy's decided she doesn't want him anymore."

"Gemma, let's find you a new school. At the new one, no one will ever ask you where your daddy is again."

Gemma had cried herself out. Once we got home, she slumped against my shoulder, snuffling, and was asleep in minutes.

After I laid her down in her room, I went to the study and made the call.

"Signor Volpe. That placement in the far territory, the little school out past the reach of all of this. I want it."

There was a pause on the other end. The old man had done business in silences longer than most men's whole careers. "Isn't the little one just starting school? Didn't you keep saying it wasn't the time to go so far?"

"I'm planning to bring her with me."

Arthur Volpe went quiet for a few seconds. I could almost hear the weight of it settling on his end, the old debt he'd carried since my father's day, the pull of it against the Family's reach. Then he pressed his signet ring flat to the table, the way a man does when he means to keep a promise, and gave his word. "Adriana. Serve out three years in that quiet corner, and when you come back, doors open on their own. You have my hand in this."

Not long after I hung up, Lorenzo came home.

He was carrying a white cake box.

"Is Gemma asleep?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

I said nothing. My hand lay flat and still on the desk, the band on my finger cold and untouched.

He said sheepishly, "Today... I didn't think it through. I bought a cake. I wanted to make up her birthday to her."