Chapter 2

They said it openly, right in front of me, without a flicker of shame. In that moment, I felt my heart grow cold toward this family, the one whose name I had kept solvent while they spent.

Bianca and Lorenzo had been sweethearts once, back before the Ricci name meant anything to me. But when the family fell on hard times, when the blood debt came due and the old alliances went quiet, she left the country without hesitation. It was I who settled that debt, five hundred thousand paid to bury a marker that would have buried them. Out of gratitude, Lorenzo married me. I had given this family everything short of my own blood.

My in-laws were faded and unwell, no rackets left to their name, no tribute coming in. I'd raised Gianna since she was ten, handled all of it, the cooking, the laundry, collecting her from school, sitting through the tutors and the meetings the matriarch couldn't be troubled to attend. She was fifteen now. I had raised her for five years. I was only her brother's wife, yet I had been more of a mother to her than anyone in that compound.

I had been generous with the old ones too, ten thousand a month into their kept purse, every meal set on their table by my hand, practically spoon-fed. I never once felt like a daughter of the house. I felt like hired help who paid out of her own pocket for the privilege of serving.

I had never expected anything back. And yet, after all of it, they treated me as less than an outsider at their own door.

Bianca crossed the room to me, one hand curled around the strap of a bag she hadn't paid for, a smug smile on her lips. "Sorry, Adriana. If I hadn't decided to come along at the last minute, you wouldn't have lost your seat and gotten stuck on the train. At first I thought I'd sit this one out, since there was nothing left. But Lorenzo said he'd handle it. I didn't think he'd put you on the train, though. I even offered to take it myself, but Lorenzo worried about me traveling alone all that way. So I suppose I owe you thanks, for taking the inconvenience."

Gianna looped her arm through Bianca's, chin lifting, arms folding in that rehearsed way of hers. "Exactly. All kinds of men ride those trains, and if someone like Bianca caught the wrong eye, what then? Adriana's got that fierce look about her, like some soldier who's seen a war. She'd frighten them off before they got close."

When she finished, the two of them burst into laughter.

Seeing the anger on my face, Lorenzo softened his voice, one hand drifting to the back of his neck. "Alright. I know this arrangement isn't ideal for you. But it's the best we could do. You were eyeing that bag last week, weren't you? Go ahead. Buy it."

I held out my hand. "Fine. Five thousand."

"That's robbery. I already said you could have the thing, and now you want me to pay for it too? Don't push it," he snapped.

I smirked and let the words fall cold. "Since when do I need your permission to spend my own money? How much do you even bring in a month?"

His face flushed. "That's not fair."

He earned three thousand a month, a soldier in name who never truly earned his button. I brought in a hundred. His take didn't cover his own habits. I had bankrolled this entire household from the first day I set foot in it.

When we married, he brought nothing to the union. I settled that fifty thousand marker, added thirty more as a gift under witness, and bought the very ground the compound stood on. This comfortable life they all enjoyed sat on money that was mine.

If they loved Bianca so much, then let her be the one to pay for them.