Rumors slithered through every hallway and safe house. They said I had compromised myself with the territory bosses, that I had traded my body for favor. The words spread like kerosene on stone, and once the match was struck, there was no stopping the fire. I was isolated. Frozen out of every meeting, every gathering, every shared meal. For four years I lived as a ghost in a world that had once been mine by birthright, surrounded by people who would not meet my eyes.
Through all of it, Giancarlo and Salvatore had sworn they stood beside me. They pressed their hands over their hearts and told me they would shield me from the poison. That no one would touch me while they drew breath.
I did not learn the truth until I was already dead.
They were the architects. Every whisper had originated from their lips or been sanctioned by their silence. Every door that closed in my face had been locked by their hands. In all those countless nights when I lay awake in the dark, tears soaking the pillow until the gray light of dawn crept through the shutters, they had been sitting with Rosalia. Laughing with Rosalia. Using the raw, bleeding wound of my suffering to make their beloved comfortable, to make her shine brighter against the shadow they had made of me.
My silence stretched too long. Rosalia filled it, her voice carrying that particular note of practiced fragility, sweet and slightly wounded, like a songbird with a clipped wing.
"Seraphina is so fortunate." She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, her gaze dropping to the ground with rehearsed modesty. "Born into a name. Born beautiful. Two men sworn to her since childhood, both devoted, both willing to kill for her. I was never given such a life." A pause, delicate as a held breath. "If Seraphina hadn't taken me in, hadn't given me the protection of the Genovese name, I never would have survived. I wouldn't have had a place anywhere."
The effect was immediate. Both men turned toward her as though pulled by the same invisible thread.