By the time I crossed the threshold of the Genovese estate, the ankle had ballooned to something grotesque, the skin taut and shining under the hallway light. Nonna Elisabetta took one look at it and her face crumpled. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of old liniment, the kind that smelled of camphor and rosemary, and she knelt on the floor to rub it into my skin with hands that had once commanded the respect of every Don in the city.
I could not let her carry my pain on top of her own. So I told her about the invitation.
I told her that I had been accepted into La Rete.
The bottle nearly slipped from her fingers. She looked up at me, and for a moment the years fell away from her face. The grief, the decline, the slow erosion of everything the Genovese name had once meant vanished behind a light I had not seen in her eyes since I was a child.
"My Seraphina." Her voice broke on the second syllable. "My girl is truly something. I am old, cara mia. I have been old for a long time. You are the only one left who can raise this Family from its knees."
I nodded. Tears burned behind my eyes, but I held them.
"After so many years." She cupped my face in her weathered hands. "After so many years of silence, the Genovese Family finally has something to celebrate. We will hold a proper feast. A gathering. We will invite everyone, and they will see that this Family still stands."
Her smile was radiant. It was the exact same smile she had worn the day she sent me to the blood-bound union ceremony in my previous life, the day she believed I was entering an alliance that would restore our honor. She had been so full of joy, so certain that Giancarlo Valenti would protect what was left of her world.
And then he never came. He abandoned the ceremony. He shattered the oath in front of every Family in Riviera City. And the shock of that public dishonor, the sheer, annihilating weight of it, stopped Nonna Elisabetta's heart where she stood.
She died on the floor of the chapel, surrounded by white flowers and the whispers of people who had already begun to forget her name.
Not again. Not in this life. I would burn the entire city to the ground before I let that happen again.
Nonna was old, and her body was fragile even if her spirit was iron. I took every detail of the feast upon myself. The venue, the guest list, the catering, the security. I handled it all.