The grand hall of the Genovese estate had not been opened in years, but Nonna and I had restored it to its former glory. Crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across white linen tablecloths. Silver candelabras lined the center of the long table. The scent of fresh gardenias and aged wine hung in the air like a benediction. Riviera City's elite filled the room: capos, consiglieres, old-guard dons with silver hair and heavy rings, their wives draped in black silk and diamonds.
Rosalia entered behind Giancarlo and Salvatore.
She wore a gown that must have cost more than anything a girl from the slums had any right to own. Midnight blue, cut low, designed to make men forget she had no family crest to speak of. She paused just inside the entrance and let her gaze sweep the hall, taking in the chandeliers, the silver, the gathered power of a dozen families.
Envy flickered across her features, quick as a knife drawn and sheathed.
"Seraphina is so lucky," she murmured, her voice barely above a breath.
Then something harder settled into her expression. Something I recognized from the life before, though I had been too blind to see it then.
"But what does noble blood and a sharp mind matter in the end?" The words were almost inaudible, spoken to no one, meant for herself alone. "I still have ways to make you wish you were dead."
The lights in the hall dimmed.
Every screen mounted along the walls of the grand hall flickered to life simultaneously. The conversations died. Glasses paused halfway to lips. A hundred pairs of eyes turned upward.
The images were photographs. One after another, projected in merciless high definition across every surface. Each one showed me, or something designed to look exactly like me, naked, tangled in bedsheets with different men. Strangers. Faces I had never seen. Bodies I had never touched. The fabrications were seamless.
The silence lasted three seconds. Then the whispers began, spreading through the room like poison through a vein.
"Isn't that the Genovese girl? The eldest daughter?"
"Dio mio. And she's supposed to be the one restoring the Family's honor?"
"What do you expect? No mother, no father, no one to teach her rispetto. A girl raised without discipline ends up exactly like this."
"They said she slept her way into La Rete's good graces. Looks like the rumors were true."