Chapter 4

Lorenzo's face was cold and hard, without a trace of guilt. If anything, his irritation only grew, the kind that made the men in the outer rooms of the Falcone estate lower their voices without knowing why.

"The clean work I do, keeping this Family respectable, that's my station. It doesn't mean I'm bound to endlessly indulge your people's crudeness and small-mindedness."

"You're the ones who keep going on about how grateful you are, working yourselves up, kissing the ring, bowing and scraping to please me. I never asked for any of it." He smoothed the lapel of his jacket once, slow, as a man does when he has decided his own conscience is clean.

His words left me with nothing to say.

He was right, in his way.

It had all been wishful thinking on our part.

In his eyes, my family's gratitude and sacrifices were nothing but a tiresome burden.

My mother's humility and endurance were coarse, unfit to be seen at his table.

And that debt of honor from years ago, the Family's protection that kept my father breathing, had become his leverage, his high ground, the very thing that let him trample our dignity.

Looking at that cold, unfeeling face, I let out a breath and spoke slowly.

"Lorenzo, let's dissolve the arrangement."

At the word, there wasn't the faintest flicker of panic on his face. In the quiet study, the clock on the mantel kept ticking, indifferent.

He looked me over from on high, as if he'd heard some absurd joke. "You want to sever it over something this trivial?"

"Adriana, you really are too spoiled. You can't tell what matters from what doesn't."

"I'm at the critical point of my rise in the Family right now, and you have to pick this exact moment to act up. You think that's funny?"

"Don't forget, when they make my standing official, doesn't that put you above the street too, being my wife?"

"After marrying into the Falcone name all this time, who even remembers you came from some dirt village outside our territory?"

"Adriana, you really should be grateful to me, not complaining."

So this was what he'd thought all along.

I didn't want to argue with him anymore. I turned and left with my mother.

In the end I still ended up telling her a lie. I told her Lorenzo couldn't come see to Father because the Family's own physician had called him away on something urgent.

And I told her I'd taken the day off my honest work, that I'd bring her back myself tomorrow.

That night, after we got home, for some reason I couldn't shake the unease.

Lorenzo sent word he had business to attend and wouldn't be coming home.

I didn't wait up for him. I tossed and turned all night and never once fell asleep.

Before dawn, the phone on the nightstand suddenly rang.

It was the clinic, the Family's clean front where my father was kept.

They told me my father's condition had taken a sudden turn for the worse, that his life was in danger at any moment.

When I got there I grabbed a hurrying nurse and asked, "Isn't Lorenzo Falcone on the clinic tonight? Why didn't anyone send for him?"

They all knew Lorenzo was the one who oversaw my father's care, the one who understood his condition and the rescue plan best.

The nurse stammered, "We've already sent word more than a dozen times, begging for him, but there's no answer on his end."

I took out my phone and called his number over and over. All I got was the busy signal, looping.

Desperate, I pulled up Valentina's social feed.

As it happened, she'd posted not long ago.

In the grid of photos, Lorenzo was in a full suit, patiently keeping company with Gloria Ricci as she danced with her circle, the heavy gold at Gloria's throat catching the light.

He matched the rhythm of her steps, steadying her with care, his face soft and gentle.

Gloria's dance troupe had a performance, and Lorenzo had gone to cheer them on with all his enthusiasm.

He spent hours upon hours keeping others entertained, pouring out endless patience to please people who meant nothing to the code and everything to his vanity.

Because of his indifference, his prolonged absence, my father missed the golden window for rescue.

My father, in the end, didn't make it.

I stood in the empty, cold room, chilled through, grief and despair choking in my throat.

My mother rushed in, and the moment she saw the sight before her, her legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor.

She lay against the ground, weeping without a sound. Her rough, calloused hands lay still against the tile, no apron left to wipe them on.

A lifetime of yielding, of accommodating, of trying to please, of servitude to repay a debt she never chose, all of it only to help me hold this arrangement together, to help me keep this family whole.

Business hours had arrived. Stumbling, I went to find Lorenzo.