Some wounds, when they have been opened too many times, simply stop bleeding.
"You have always had your preference," I said, and I was surprised to hear something almost like dark amusement in my own voice. "And that preference was never me."
Don Ettore's expression hardened into something dangerous.
"Return to your fiancé," he commanded, his tone brooking no argument. "And remember what you owe this Family."
I lowered my lashes in a gesture of submission.
"Understood."
But I knew, with a certainty that settled into my bones like winter frost, that this would be the last time I bent my head to their authority.
The first thing I noticed was the suffocating weight of silence in the private dining hall.
Crystal chandeliers cast fractured light across the endless stretch of the table—a river of polished mahogany lined with silver and Venetian glass. This was the inner circle of the Ashford Syndicate, a gathering where pleasantries were considered weakness and every gesture carried the weight of a blood oath. There were no innocents here. Only predators and prey.
And I had been placed beside Giorgio.
He reached for me, his hand closing around my wrist with practiced ease, drawing me closer as though we were truly the blessed couple our families had proclaimed us to be. The gesture was seamless, rehearsed—a performance for the watching eyes.
In that moment, an absurd thought drifted through my mind like smoke.
If I disappeared right now—if I simply ceased to exist—would anyone at this table even notice my absence?
What followed was not grief.
It was clarity, cold and absolute, arriving at the most inconvenient hour.
Why should I have to endure all of this?
From the moment I was brought into this Family, I was standing in the wrong place. Silvia never had to fight for anything. As long as she appeared, someone would clear the path for her. And I, labeled as the younger sister, was always nothing more than a backdrop—a shadow cast by a brighter flame.