Hands shaking, I called every connected attorney I could find—men who'd represented capos, who'd gotten made men acquitted, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies were all the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones.
"Sorry, Miss Giordano. Colino Marconi made it very clear—anyone who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the Family by morning. We can't help you. Capisce?"
I dropped to the pavement outside the last office, my knees hitting cold stone. My palm landed on jagged concrete, blood seeping from the cut and mixing with the grime of the alley—yet I barely felt a thing. The physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache consuming my chest.
When I was sixteen, my father threw Mom and me out of our home like we were nothing. The same day, Piper and her mother moved in—his mistress and her bastard daughter, finally claiming what they'd been circling for years.
I still remember Piper—just thirteen—smirking from the staircase as we carried our belongings past her. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and in that moment, I learned the truth that had been hidden from me my entire childhood. My father, Filippo Giordano, had been keeping a comare for years. We were the legitimate family, but we were also the disposable ones.
Mom and I ended up on the streets with nothing but the clothes on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath an overpass for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatch job. A crew of men in black—professionals, clearly—were dragging a young man toward a waiting car. Even in the darkness, even half-conscious from cold and hunger, I recognized the face from the society pages.
Colino Marconi. Heir to the Marconi Crime Family. Being grabbed by a rival outfit.
Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fray, fighting like a woman possessed, screaming for me to run and call for help. By the time the Marconi soldiers arrived, she'd driven off three armed men with nothing but her bare hands and a broken bottle. She nearly died doing it. They stabbed her over and over, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him.