Chapter 2

The next second, Isabella straightened her back again.

“What, am I wrong? You did grow up in that filthy place. Who knows what kind of people you’ve been mixed up with all these years? Now the Scolas bring you back, and you think you can step over Stella? Do you even deserve it?”

Stella lowered her head and said nothing.

That was what she did best.

She never made the first move. She simply stood aside and let other people fight for her.

I looked at her and suddenly smiled.

When she raised her head and met my eyes, her face went slightly pale.

“Stella,” I said gently, “do you think so too?”

The room went quiet for a moment.

Everyone looked at Stella.

She bit her lip, her eyes reddening at exactly the right time.

“Why are you forcing me? I never wanted to fight you for anything.”

“Really?”

I slowly gathered the last bead into my palm.

“But you look very afraid of me.”

Stella’s pupils tightened.

As if I had stabbed the truth in one sentence.

Just then, there came the soft clatter of glassware not far away. Someone seemed to have lost his grip and spilled wine across the table.

Everyone turned.

Marco Falcone stood beneath the chandelier, his face terrifyingly white.

Marco was looking at me.

More precisely, he was staring at my face.

The shock in his eyes was so obvious that even the people around him noticed.

Someone asked in a low voice, “Marco, what’s wrong?”

He did not answer.

He just stood there, frozen, like he had seen a ghost.

I looked at him and smiled.

Across half the ballroom, Marco actually stepped back half a pace.

Everyone saw it.

The room became even quieter.

Stella saw it too. Her fingertips tightened almost imperceptibly.

Clearly, she had not expected that I, an outsider newly dragged back by the Scolas, could make a son of the Falcone family look like that.

Isabella still did not understand. She frowned and said, “Marco knows her?”

Marco’s throat moved, but he still said nothing.

He seemed to be hesitating. His eyes fixed on my bare wrist, then fell to the beads in my palm, and his face became uglier.

I found it amusing, so I gave him a slight nod.

“Marco.”

Just two syllables.

His hand jerked violently, and the glass between his fingers fell straight to the floor.

With a sharp crack, broken crystal scattered everywhere.

This time, no one could pretend they had not seen.

Luciano, the heir apparent, had not yet arrived. At that moment, Marco was the most important Falcone in the room. Yet when he looked at me, he looked like a rat that had seen a cat, his face faintly gray.

Even Isabella, slow as she was, finally sensed something was wrong.

She looked suspiciously from Marco to me, but still forced herself to speak.

“She’s just some wild girl from outside. Why would Marco—”

“Shut up!”

Marco snapped almost before she could finish.

His voice was sharp and urgent.

Isabella froze under the insult, her face turning red and white by turns.

Marco, however, had no attention to spare for her. He only stared at me, a thin layer of cold sweat already forming on his forehead.

That fear was not fake.

Of course he was afraid.

Seven years ago, at a private riding club outside the city, he got drunk and blocked my path with his men, trying to take me back to his apartment.

Back then, I was carrying a collection case and wearing plain clothes. I looked ordinary enough.

He thought I was an ordinary girl he could play with and smiled as he asked if I wanted to leave with him.

I smiled too.

Then I flicked a little powder into the bottle he carried.

The poison was not fatal.

It only made the whole body itch, itching down into the seams of the bones until a person could neither live properly nor die.

The Falcone family’s private doctors were helpless. He begged every underground physician he could find, and in the end, word came from Black Hollow. Only then did he learn whom he had offended.

From then on, whenever he saw a woman in dark clothes, he looked twice, afraid he might run into me again.

And now, he clearly had recognized me.

But he did not dare say it.

Or rather, he did not dare say the name of that place in a room like this.

Because once he said it, tonight’s family dinner would no longer be about a few sharp words.

I did not speak. I only watched him quietly.

More and more sweat gathered on Marco’s forehead.

At last, he lowered his voice and bent slightly toward me.

“They don’t know the rules. They offended you.”

“Please, show mercy. Spare them this once.”

A direct member of the Falcone family had lowered himself in public to apologize for two daughters from client families.

The whole hall went still.

Isabella’s face turned white. Only then did panic finally reach her.