Chapter 3

"We can keep you under the Family's shield, cara, but four years buys nothing. Protection like ours is a lifetime debt."

A few young girls drifted past the courtyard of the safehouse, throwing me glances thick with envy. In another life those looks would have warmed me. Now there was no ripple in my heart, only the cold quiet of someone who had already died once and learned exactly what such envy was worth.

In the life before this one, the four of us had been folded into the same arranged future, the same rival Family's care. To secure a place worth having, I bled myself dry. I studied their business, learned their ledgers, made myself useful at every sit-down and every feast, thinking loyalty and effort would be counted in my favor. In the end, every reward meant for me was quietly rerouted. My standing, my promised seat at the table, all of it bartered away in the dark and pressed into Livia's soft hands.

Then came the whispers on the street. That I had earned my place on my back, that I had let the old men who ran things use me. For four full years I was cut off, isolated, made a stranger at tables that should have been mine. And the two of them, Lorenzo and Dominic, had sworn they would stand at my shoulder, that no one would touch me while they drew breath. I did not learn until I was already dead that they were the architects of it all. Through countless nights I lay awake and wept until the grey light came, not knowing that my ruin was the coin they spent to keep Livia smiling. They fed her my suffering like some sweet delicacy and watched her bloom on it.

Seeing me silent, Livia let her voice go thin and sour, the way it always did when she wanted the men to hear a wound.

"Francesca is so fortunate." She pressed two fingers lightly to the base of her throat, a small wounded gesture, all fragile innocence. "Born into the Genovese blood, beautiful, safe. Both her childhood companions would burn the whole city for her. I was never given such a life. If Francesca's Family had not taken me in off the street, I would have nothing at all. No name. No shelter. No one."

The two capos-in-waiting felt it land exactly where she aimed it. Their faces softened with that tender, useless pity men mistake for devotion.

"Livia, don't speak of yourself that way." Lorenzo turned the Valente heirloom ring slowly around his little finger as he spoke, easy, unhurried, the picture of a man certain of his own generosity. "You're beautiful. You're better than half the blood at any table in this territory. When the time comes I'll have my father set you at the head of the Valente holdings. You'll want for nothing."

"No, Livia, come to me instead." Dominic's voice climbed, hot as it always ran. "The Falcone name will give you a higher place than that, and better tribute besides. Anything you ask for, it's yours. Say the word."

And there they were, two men who could order a room silent with a look, quarreling over who could lay more at Livia's feet. I stood at the edge of it, the small worn Genovese signet cool against my collarbone, and felt the old sorrow rise before I could stop it.

All these years. All this history between us. Not once had either of them made me a single promise like that, offered me a single indulgence freely given. And there it was, plain as blood on marble. Counterfeit love, no matter how long it wore my name, could never stand against the real thing bedded down deep in the heart. I closed my hand around the little signet at my throat until the worn edges bit my palm, and I let them have their tender scene. I would not spend another lifetime as the pain that fed their happiness.