For a brief moment, they hesitated. Something in my father's eyes, that unbroken fire, that pride that refused to bend even now, made them pause. The old Don's gaze still carried the ghost of the man who had once decided whether men like them lived or disappeared. But that moment didn't last.
Giada, thriving in the chaos like it was her personal stage, strode forward with a gleam of excitement in her eyes. Her fingers brushed the hollow of her throat as she moved, that old habit, and then without a second thought, she raised her hand and slapped my father hard across the face.
The sound rang out, crisp and brutal.
He froze. Completely.
This was a man who had once stood at the top. Former head of the Commission of the Five Families. A man who had sat across from senators, judges, governors, men whose careers he had built or ended with a phone call. A man who commanded respect wherever he went. And now, in front of a room full of people, he had been struck by the very woman who had stolen everything from him, a Sorrentino nobody who had crawled into his household through his son-in-law's bed.
For a split second, it looked like he was about to explode, years of dignity and restraint collapsing into pure rage. But I moved faster. I grabbed his arm, pulling him back with all my strength before the situation spiraled completely out of control.
"This is too much," someone whispered, their voice trembling. "They even hit Don Valente?"
"How could they disrespect him like that?" another voice rose, louder this time. "Don Valente is a great man. He's built churches, funded scholarships, kept families fed when times were hard. How dare they treat him like this?"
"Seraphina threw her entire life away for that man," someone else added bitterly. "Doesn't she understand? A woman can't undo that kind of sacrifice. Men can become fathers at seventy, but a woman… once it's gone, it's gone."
"If my daughter had done something like this," another muttered darkly, "I would've knocked some sense into her a long time ago."
"This couple, Nico and Giada, they're disgusting," someone said, unable to hide their contempt. "And now they're sitting on the Valente fortune? Running Valente territory? What a joke."