I texted him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and checked myself out not long after.
Then the wedding coordinator called. The gown my mother had ordered for me—commissioned from the finest seamstress in Little Italy, paid for with years of her modest savings—had been altered to fit. It was ready.
It was the last gift she left me before the Marconis let her die. I had to pick it up.
But when I stepped into the boutique, the bell above the door chiming softly, I froze.
There stood Piper—twirling in my gown.
"Anneliese… you came." She spun in front of the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey.
"I just had to make sure it fits, you know. Trying to help you out."
She tugged the neckline lower with deliberate provocation, revealing fresh red marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin. Her tone turned mockingly bashful.
"Oh no, it's Colino's fault—he's just too passionate. I told him to be gentle…"
I stared at her performance, cold and unblinking as a statue carved from marble.
"You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other women's men."
Her smile twitched, then curved into something crueler—the mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath.
"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Colino's heir."
"And your blood contract?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."
She flashed a video on her phone. A dim back room of some social club. Piper draped across Colino's lap like a trophy.
He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.
"Do your best and bring the child into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Marconi territory. Everything."
Piper asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?"
Colino chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. I've been slipping birth control into her milk for months. She can't conceive. When the time comes, I'll just claim we adopted."
It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright.
So that was it.
Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind—too desperate to believe in the fairy tale—to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.