"Colino, I'm frightened... look at her eyes. She's lost her mind..."
He hesitated. The crack sealed over, smooth as fresh ice on a winter pond.
He stepped back. Drew her closer against his chest.
His gaze slid away from mine like oil on water. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow. Mechanical. The voice of a man already washing his hands.
"Go home. Try not to cause any more disgrace to this Family."
I rose. Somehow. My legs trembled like a newborn foal's, but I refused to fall. Not here. Not before these jackals in their designer gowns and hand-stitched suits.
I turned to face him one final time.
The man I'd loved for a decade. The heir I'd been promised to since girlhood. The future Don who couldn't recognize loyalty when it knelt bleeding at his feet.
Then I walked away.
The crowd parted before me like the Red Sea—not from respect, but from revulsion. As though my grief were contagious. As though my mother's murder might somehow stain their precious reputations.
Let them look.
Let them remember this moment when the reckoning came.
The night bit with savage cold when I reached the crematorium on the outskirts of the city. I stood in silence as my mother—Lucia Giordano, faithful servant, devoted parent, woman who'd once saved a Marconi heir from a rival Family's snatch job and received nothing but contempt in return—turned to ash.
The flames consumed her. Orange and gold and terrible.
When her remains scattered into the dark waters of the harbor, so did the last tether binding my heart to this world.
Gone. Just like that.
At midnight, I slipped the engagement ring from my finger—the three-carat symbol of a blood pact that had never been honored. I set it gently inside the nightstand drawer of the bedroom I'd shared with Colino's ghost for three hollow years.
No need for formal dissolution. His devotion had never been real to begin with.
How convenient.
I wheeled my single suitcase to the front door of the Marconi estate, my footsteps echoing through halls that had never truly been my home.
My phone buzzed.
Colino: [Did you get your wounds treated? Piper says she forgives you. Let's put this behind us and focus on tomorrow.]
Colino: [I picked up a new gown for the ceremony. Hand-beaded Venetian lace. Gorgeous. I'll have it sent over.]
No reply.
A moment passed. The phone buzzed again, more insistent.