"You are carrying the next head of this family. Stop this nonsense. People in our circles are already whispering that you and Xavier are separating. I've organized a dinner tonight. Xavier's closest associates will be there. You will arrive on time. You will arrive with your husband. And you will not make a scene. Am I understood?"
The line went dead before I could answer. From beginning to end, she had spoken at me, not to me. Orders delivered with the efficiency of a woman who had spent decades commanding household staff and never learned the difference between a daughter-in-law and a servant.
I set the phone down on the desk and stared at it for a long time.
I wanted to see their faces. All of them. The people who had betrayed me, who had treated me worse than a stray dog begging at the back door of a restaurant. I wanted to look at every last one of them before I left for the Valducci compound in the capital. So I called a cab and rode across town to the Salvatore family estate, watching the city blur past the rain-streaked window in silence.
The dining hall was lit by a crystal chandelier that threw cold light across a table set for twelve. Jane Salvatore sat at its head, her posture immaculate, her fingers wrapped around a glass of Barolo as though it were a scepter. The moment I stepped through the arched doorway, a hush settled over the room like a cloth dropped over a birdcage. Xavier's associates, his crew of loyal sycophants and hangers-on, turned to look at me. Several rolled their eyes without bothering to hide it.
"Auntie, why did you even invite her?" one of them muttered, loud enough to carry. "All she's going to do is spoil the mood."
"The witch is here to intrude between the loving couple again." They did not bother to lower their voices. The cruelty was deliberate, each word lobbed like a stone meant to land.
"Mia, sit here." Jane pointed a manicured finger toward a chair near the center of the table.
I ignored her. I was already seated at the far end, my hands folded in my lap, my expression as still as a frozen lake.
Teodoro Brasi, Xavier's closest friend and most devoted lapdog, leaned forward with a smirk that split his face like a knife wound. "Hey, Mia. What was your surname again?" He snapped his fingers in mock recollection. "Oh, my apologies. I forgot. You don't have one, do you? Hard to have a family name when you don't have a father."