Chapter 3

"She may have taken something, but she's still your grandmother, the woman who raised you. You owe her that respect," Lorenzo said, the words smooth as the leather beneath us.

My brows tightened. "She didn't take anything. And if we're binding our bloodlines, she'd be your grandmother too."

"All right," he sighed. "There's no hard proof, so fine. Let's say she didn't. Ambra told me it was her mother's necklace that went missing and she panicked. That's why she brought in men to hold her."

"She feels bad your nonna ended up in the ward. So let's go there first and look in on her, all right?"

Lorenzo rolled down the window. Ambra sat in the front seat, smiling sweetly as she waved at me, the picture of a Falcone daughter who never once had blood on her hands.

"I heard your nonna has trouble with her pressure," she said. "I forgot to tell the men to keep her medicine on hand, so I had the best and most expensive brought in. She'll be out of that bed in no time."

Her syrupy smile made my stomach turn. "Don't bother pretending to care. Save the act," I said coldly.

Ambra's smile froze on her face, held a half-second too long before it reset.

Lorenzo's expression darkened all at once. "Gianna, be grateful, would you? Ambra and I walked out of two sit-downs to come here. We didn't drive all this way for your drama. Get in the car and stop wasting time."

Ambra nodded quickly, trying to recover. "Signorina Rossi, I came to apologize. Sincerely. I admit I overreacted. It was all just a terrible misunderstanding."

But her little "misunderstanding" had cost my grandmother her life.

I clutched the urn tighter in my hands and took two steps back. "Sure. Go ahead and apologize. On your knees."

Ambra's eyes welled with tears.

"How could you say that? I'm here because I truly want to make it right. I even had medicine brought for your grandmother. Why are you telling me to kneel? Are you really trying to make an example of me?"

"This is all my fault, isn't it? I lost something and I panicked, so it's all on me." Then she added, "You two, go and enjoy choosing your union clothes. I should never have come back."

Ambra flung open the car door and ran off.

Lorenzo was faster. He caught up in three strides, grabbing her, pulling her into him. He gentled her the way I had never once seen him gentle anything, murmuring low while she sobbed into his chest.

Then he looked at me. "Gianna. Even if you're angry, you can't make decisions for your grandmother."

I met his eyes. "It's fine. She already heard everything."

Lorenzo went very still. I turned and walked away soon after, my thumb pressing hard against the cold gold at my wrist.

The men handling the burial had messaged several times. The ground was ready. It was time.

By the time it was over and I made it back into the territory, the streets had gone dark and quiet, the kind of quiet that only settles once the last front business shutters for the night. I had nowhere to go, so I took a room in a cheap motel on the edge of Vitale ground just to close my eyes.

After I washed, my phone kept buzzing. Lorenzo had sent photographs of union gowns.

When I didn't answer, he called. Then again. And again. I didn't care. I shut the phone off and rolled over. I didn't expect what came next.

Half-asleep, I jolted awake when the locked door was forced open, wood splitting from the frame.

Lorenzo stood in the doorway, breathing hard, then let the breath out in something like relief. "You scared the hell out of me. You can't just kill your phone and vanish. Nobody's supposed to be able to disappear like that. If you didn't want to see Ambra, I understand. That's why I came myself."

I didn't have the strength left to fight him. So I got in the car.

Fine. I'd go back. I needed the gold bracelets my grandmother left behind anyway.

But the moment I opened the door to the apartment, the lights flared on.

Ambra stood in the center of the room, dressed head to toe in a rabbit costume. She fired a party cannon in my face. "Happy ten-year anniversary of the day Lorenzo and I first met!"

I froze.

Behind me, Lorenzo laughed, caught off guard. "I thought you'd gone home. Why are you back already? And all this. You actually remembered the date?"

So that was why he'd had the time to chase me down earlier. Because Ambra had gone home. He'd only softened toward me because his other woman wasn't in the room.

Now he was holding her while she threw herself into his arms.

They laughed together, and she cut a smug, satisfied look at me over his shoulder.

I didn't say a word. I walked calmly into the bedroom.

The moment I opened the door, I saw it, packed wall to wall with junk. Like a storage closet. Like a trash heap.