I stared at him through blood-matted hair, disbelief clawing at my throat.
He wasn't finished.
"Your mother was weak. She got cast aside and died chasing scraps. Now you're blaming Piper for your own blood's failures? Everyone here witnessed what you did." His lip curled with disgust. "Are you proud of yourself, Anneliese? Is this the respect you bring to our union?"
The room hummed with whispers, growing louder and uglier with each passing heartbeat—vultures circling carrion.
"I heard her mother once lifted jewelry from Donna Carmela's collection," one woman murmured, her voice deliberately carrying across the marble hall. "Word is she died during some botched snatch job—turned up with her organs harvested like livestock. Honestly? Sounds like she had it coming. Disloyal blood runs true."
"And the daughter's cut from the same cloth," another voice added with venomous satisfaction. "Ungrateful little puttana. Raised to sink her claws into men above her station. Just like her whore of a mother."
I remained on my knees, the cold seeping through silk into bone. I wanted to scream—to tell them they were wrong. That my mother wasn't a thief. That Lucia Giordano had served the Marconi household with more loyalty than any of them would ever understand. That I wasn't some scheming woman trying to climb above my place.
But my throat was dust. My voice, stolen.
Colino's patience frayed like old rope.
"Apologize, Anneliese. I'll count to three." His words fell like hammer blows. "One... two—"
Disappointment seared through every fiber of my being—a betrayal more complete than any blade could deliver.
I gave in.
My knees cracked against the unforgiving marble. I lifted my chin—then drove my forehead down in a bow so violent I tasted copper flooding my mouth.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
Blood mingled with tears, blurring the world into watercolors of crimson and gold.
I raised my head with a smile that felt like broken glass cutting my own face.
"Is that enough, Colino? Did your precious comare receive sufficient tribute?"
He froze. Something flickered behind his eyes—a crack in the ice, a ghost of the boy who'd once held my hand in his mother's garden. His pupils contracted as though he finally saw me. Saw the ruin he'd made of us both.
He took half a step forward.
But Piper's fingers dug into his arm, her voice quivering with manufactured terror.