"Is this enough for you?" I straightened with every last ounce of strength left in my shattered body, meeting his gaze with disgust I could barely contain behind my teeth.
His jaw tightened. He gestured sharply to his consigliere's assistant. "Bring the agreement."
Only when I pressed my bloody fingerprint onto the document—transferring my stakes in the Family's legitimate fronts, signing away my mother's legacy—did the tension finally ease from his brow.
"You're bleeding," he observed, as if noticing the weather. "I'll send for a doctor."
He released Piper and moved toward me, reaching out with the hand that had once cradled my face like I was something precious.
I slapped it away.
"Save your concern for your precious comare," I spat. "Better hurry—wait any longer and those theatrical bruises might fade before anyone important sees them."
I turned to leave, my vision swimming, my legs threatening to buckle.
Piper's foot shot out with serpentine precision.
I tripped hard, crashing forward toward the unforgiving marble.
Colino's instincts fired—the reflexes of a man trained since childhood to protect what was his. He reached out—
Then stopped himself. His hand froze inches from my falling body.
He stepped back.
"Fine." His voice was ice. "Handle your wounds yourself."
I forced myself upright, swallowing the scream that clawed at my throat as pain lanced through every nerve.
He watched me from the elevator threshold, Piper tucked possessively against his side. "I'll accompany you to select your gown tomorrow," he said, as if we were discussing dinner reservations. "The alliance ceremony won't plan itself."
The gilded elevator doors slid closed on his impassive face.
My body swayed, the dizziness from blood loss rising in nauseating waves. The chandelier above fractured into a thousand spinning diamonds.
In the blur of agony, memory dragged me backward—back to a different time. Back to when we were young and the world hadn't yet taught us its cruelest lessons.
Colino was just nineteen when his father began grooming him to inherit the Family. He'd worked through endless nights learning the business—both legitimate and otherwise—his eyes perpetually rimmed with exhaustion. One evening, I burned my hand while making soup for him in the estate's kitchen. Just a small blister, barely worth mentioning.