"Boy," Piper sneered, dropping the pretense like a mask she'd grown tired of wearing, "that old hag loved you like you were the whole world, didn't she?"
She leaned in close, her perfume cloying and expensive, her breath hot against my ear.
"One day," she whispered, "I stepped on Don Marconi's favorite peonies. On purpose. Crushed them right into the soil." Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "The head of household staff said he'd dock her three months' pay. Your mother begged. On her knees. Right there in the garden, with dirt under her fingernails and tears running down her face."
My vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single point—Piper's smiling face.
"I found out later she hadn't taken a day off in months," Piper continued, giggling like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Just to save money. For you. For your wedding to a man who was already sharing my bed."
She pulled back, her eyes glittering with malice.
"And when I told her to crawl through the garden like a dog?" Piper's smile widened. "She did it. Just like that. Hands and knees through the mud, while I watched."
My world crumbled.
All those times my mother had smiled and told me not to worry about a thing while I planned my wedding to Colino... all those times she'd insisted everything was fine, that the Marconis treated her well, that being in service to a powerful Family was an honor...
I never knew. I never knew what she had endured for my sake.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and something inside me snapped clean in two.
I raised my hand, eyes blazing with three years of suppressed rage.
"Piper, you're a monster."
But before my palm could even graze her cheek, she threw herself backward out of the elevator, crying out like a wounded animal as she clutched her unmarked face.
"Anneliese, I said I was sorry!" she sobbed, her voice carrying through the marble corridor with theatrical precision. "I even knelt to you, but you're still being so cruel—do you really want me dead that badly?!"
Employees—soldiers in expensive suits, associates who knew better than to interfere in Family business—turned to stare.
"If you want me dead so bad, then fine!" Piper staggered to her feet, swaying dramatically. "I'll die for your mother! I'll pay the blood debt myself!"
She lurched toward the wall as if to crack her own skull against the marble.
"Piper!"