Chapter 3

Bianca isn't done with us.

At the gala, she makes a show of it. Snaps her fingers at my mother to refill her champagne. Drops a napkin and waits, smiling, until my mother kneels on the marble to pick it up. Every woman in that room watches the Moretti princess serve drinks to a stripper Dante picked up in a back-alley club in Atlantic City.

When Bianca's had enough sport with the crowd, she walks us out to the gardens behind the venue. There's a pond. No witnesses.

She tugs off one of her diamond earrings and flicks it into the water.

"Go get it."

My mother doesn't move.

Bianca's face goes ugly so fast I almost laugh.

"Isabella. You're my maid tonight. I tell you to do something, you do it. Go get it."

My mother looks at her for a long, quiet second.

"A ring won't change what you are, Bianca. You're a mistress. You'll die a mistress."

Bianca's hand flies up to slap her.

I get there first.

I shove Bianca hard in the chest—she stumbles back two steps in her heels—and I plant myself in front of my mother.

"Get the fuck away from her."

"You little bitch—"

She swings on me.

My mother yanks me into her arms a half-second before her nails connect; instead of my cheek, Bianca's nails rake down my mother's throat. Four red lines well up instantly.

And for one beat—one single beat—my mother's eyes flash with something I haven't seen in three years. The old Moretti fire. The look she had in the photos from before she married him.

Bianca actually flinches back.

Then she remembers where she is, and she sneers.

"You're all bark, Isabella. No bite."

She turns to me.

"Fine. Don't get it. But Cleo's marriage contract is sitting on Dante's desk right now, and I get a say. Want me to recommend the Falcone man? Or the Romano heir?"

The Falcone man is forty-three and on his fourth wife.

The Romano heir is nineteen and beat a maid to death last summer for serving cold coffee. His father paid it off.

My mother's hand jerks against my shoulder.

"I'll get the earring," she whispers.

The water is freezing.

My mother walks down the stone steps into the pond fully dressed.

Her lips are blue inside of two minutes.

"Mama!"

Bianca slaps me. Hard. Then again, backhand.

"Shut your mouth, you spoiled little bitch—"

"What the hell is going on?"

Dante's voice.

Bianca reacts in a heartbeat. She grabs my hand—drives my palm into her own chest—and throws herself backwards over the low railing into the pond.

The splash is theatrical.

Then Dante is in the water before his jacket is off, and he hauls Bianca out cradled against his chest like she's made of glass.

My mother is twenty feet away, drowning.

A waiter from the gala—not family, not blood, just a kid trying to keep his job—is the one who jumps in and drags her to the edge.

Bianca clings to Dante's lapels and shakes.

"I'm sorry, Dante, I'm so sorry—I shouldn't have come tonight—" She sees me and screams, hides her face against his shoulder. "Don't let her hit me again, please, please—"

"I didn't touch you!" I'm shaking. My cheek is on fire from her slap. "She made my mother get in the water for an earring! She called me a bitch! She's been hitting me, look at my face, look—"

Dante looks at my mother instead.

Bruised, half-drowned, lips blue, barely breathing on the wet stones.

For one second, something flickers behind his eyes. Something that almost looks like he still loves her.

Then Bianca sobs against him.

"Dante, please—I know she hates me. Fine. But to drag Cleo into it? To make a child lie for her?"

She lifts her tear-streaked face.

"I admit it. I slapped Cleo. Because she called me a bitch. She said I spread my legs for every man and insulted my dead mother."

Bianca's voice climbs.

"I was nobody before you, Dante, but I have pride. I'd rather drown than be treated like that—"

She lunges for the railing like she's going to throw herself in again.

"Enough."

Dante's voice is ice.

"Take her to the basement. Twenty with the belt."

"No!"

My mother throws herself in front of me before the guards drag me.

"She's mine. I raised her. Whatever she did—do it to me."

Dante looks down at her. Cold as hell.

"Forty."

...

The basement is cold. Concrete floor. One bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.

My mother kneels on the floor.

By the tenth, I'm sobbing so hard I can't breathe.

By the twentieth, my mom can't even hold her head up.

And I taste blood where I've bitten through my lip.

I'm on my knees outside, screaming at the men, screaming at Dante, screaming at God—

"Please. Please! She's my MOM! Please stop!"

By the end, she coughs up blood and collapses face-down on the concrete.

I get her back to her room. I pay the family doctor double to come at midnight.

Until dawn, I can't hold it anymore and pass out beside her.

I wake up again because someone is in the room.

Dante.

He's kneeling beside the bed. He lifts the back of her nightgown with hands that are actually shaking, and a tear lands on her shoulder blade.

He cleans the wounds himself. He whispers to her, voice broken.

"Bella. Bella, why do you have to be so stubborn."

"Bianca's a good girl. She saved my life. You don't know what she did for me. You don't know."

"Just let her have a baby. Once she gives me a baby, I'll send her away. You and me and Cleo. Back to how we were. Like before."

I shut my eyes quietly.

There is no "how we were."