His gaze traveled down my arm, stopping on the pale lattice of old scars that marked the skin above my wrist. Something shifted in his expression—recognition, perhaps, or the ghost of a memory he had chosen to bury. "How did these happen?"
"You're asking now." My voice came out flat as a blade laid on velvet. "Don't you think it's too late?"
His brow furrowed. "The Family had much to contend with back then. You know this. The war with the Valentino syndicate, the federal investigations—"
"I know," I said. "You were with her."
That single sentence emptied the room of air.
I remembered a night not long past. I had slipped away from the gathering, avoiding the soldiers and the wives with their sharp eyes, and made my way alone to the courtyard behind the main house. Beyond the reach of the wrought-iron lanterns, in the shadow of the old fig tree my adoptive father had planted the year I arrived, I saw them.
Standing too close. Their distance the kind that exists only between lovers or conspirators.
She laughed—that practiced, musical sound she deployed like a weapon—and the way Giorgio looked down at her carried a focus, an attention, that I had never once received. Not when I brought him coffee during his late-night meetings with the Capos. Not when I sat beside him at Family dinners, performing the role of the loyal betrothed. Not once in all those years.
She noticed me watching.
No panic touched her features. No scramble for explanation. Only the serene composure of someone who had already claimed victory and was merely waiting for the rest of us to acknowledge it.
From that night forward, I never asked him another question.
"She's fragile," Giorgio said finally, as though that single word could justify everything. "The Family doesn't want her... affected."
"I understand." I kept my voice carefully neutral. "You care about her."
The words fell between us like a body into deep water. No splash. But the weight of them sank all the same.
He attempted to redirect, reaching for something on the nightstand. "This is for you."
A small bundle of white flowers—calla lilies, their stems wrapped in black ribbon, trimmed with the precision of someone who had been taught that presentation mattered more than sincerity.
I glanced at them without moving. "Where did you get them?"
"Does it matter?"