Chapter 1

For years I had run the Family's business abroad, keeping the empire clean and quiet from across the ocean. The night word reached me that my son meant to seal a bloodline alliance, I flew home on the red-eye without a second thought.

That evening, my son let it be known through the Family's circles, a photograph of the two of us at supper passed hand to hand among the people who mattered.

The word attached to it read: Grateful to have you by my side through it all — the most important woman in my life.

And because of it, the girl promised to him took me for a rival's kept woman. On the day of the alliance sit-down feast, she cornered me at the salon with a whole pack of her friends.

"You shameless slut, how dare you try to seduce my husband."

"I'll make sure you never sleep with a man again as long as you live. Ladies, sew her up down there. Anything happens, I'll take the blame."

They beat me savagely on Family soil, then dragged me to the sit-down feast.

"Today I'm going to show you exactly who it is my husband loves."

The girl ground her heel into my face, nearly humiliating me to death, and every guest at the table roared with laughter.

Just as she stood there flushed with triumph, tearing into her "mistress," my son finally arrived, late.

Barely clinging to life, I looked up at him.

"This alliance feast — I'm afraid there's no need to hold it anymore."

——

When I first heard my son meant to be betrothed to the girl he'd kept close for two years,

I was over the moon, thinking the Vitale bloodline finally had a future. From across the ocean I set down every operation on my plate. I booked the earliest flight I could find and came home on the red-eye that same night.

Tonight my son and I were reunited after so long apart, and while we sat over supper in one of our own restaurants, a quiet front the Family owned outright, he passed that photograph of the two of us to the people in our circle.

He'd sent a line with it too: Grateful to have you — the most important woman in my life.

Ever since my son Lorenzo Vitale's father passed away, the entire weight of the Family had come down on my shoulders, and I'd had no choice but to take the empire abroad.

Years had gone by without my seeing my son.

Now that I'd finally heard he was to be betrothed, I made careful preparations. I meant to face the Falcones looking my very best, so I'd never bring shame on my son or the Vitale name.

That night my son and the girl had a fierce quarrel.

I asked him what had happened. The very next day was the sit-down feast.

Furious, he told me, "Adriana Falcone says she's going to drag some mistress into the light. It makes no sense. I'm a Vitale. The way I carry myself, how could I possibly keep a woman on the side?"

I'd never been one to meddle much in my son's affairs, or ask many questions about them.

Still, I gave him his lesson. "A marriage that seals two Families is a matter of loyalty before anything else. Before you take her, you learn what that word costs. And if I ever find out you've mistreated the girl who carries this bloodline, you'll see exactly how a Donna deals with her own." I turned the thin gold band on my left hand a slow quarter-turn with my thumb, though he was in no danger from me yet.

"I don't care whether you really do have another woman out there."

"Since you've chosen Adriana, you cut all of it off. Every last bit."

My words left my son's face damp with sweat.

I never imagined that my son and Adriana, the very night before the sit-down feast that would bind the Vitale and Falcone names, would come apart over this business of a mistress.

Quietly, I made up my mind. Tomorrow, at the feast, I would step in myself and clear the misunderstanding between Lorenzo and the girl.

I'd even had an estate deeded over as a gift for them, worth a hundred million, my present, as the mother of the Family, to the girl I would welcome into the bloodline.

The next day, before the feast, I prepared with great care and even went to the salon for some light work on my face. I meant to attend tonight's gathering looking my very best, as befit the widow who held the Vitale throne.

Just as everything was ready and I was about to leave for my son's betrothal,

I saw Adriana, the girl promised to him, storm into the salon leading a whole group of her friends, seething with rage.

What a small world, I thought, and I was just about to rise and greet her, to make myself known to the girl before the night began.

Adriana's glare landed hard on me, and with all her friends in tow, she came striding straight toward me.

Under everyone's astonished stares,

Adriana slapped me across the face, ruining the work I'd taken such care with, the burning sting sending the whole room spinning around me.

In the chaos,

Adriana reached out, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and screamed in my face,

"You cheap piece of trash, may you rot for the son you bore."

"You think just because Lorenzo wouldn't tell me, hiding out here, I wouldn't find you?"