Panic flickered through Lorenzo Falcone's eyes, those eyes that were always so controlled, the same eyes men in this city learned never to meet for too long.

"Gemma was beside herself over the club, so I took her out to settle her nerves. She had a few too many, and..."

His tone softened a fraction.

"Anyway, forget about that. I'll be at the next appointment with you. I promise."

Again. The same routine.

A flimsy excuse to wave me off, then something sweet to smooth it over, as if none of it ever happened.

But Lorenzo, you will never need to come to another appointment with me.

"Don't bother. Let's sever it. All of it."

He froze for a second, then his face twisted with anger.

"Adriana, is this one of your games? You spent too long collecting other people's dirt, and now you turn everything into a sit-down. I told you it was an accident. Do you have to drag the whole famiglia into it?"

"And let's be honest. You're pushing thirty, you're carrying my child, and you gave up your own standing to marry into this bloodline. You're nothing now without the name I gave you. Who else would have you besides me?"

"I bleed for this Family every single day, and I don't come home to find you picking fights over nothing."

He moved toward the door.

Passing the entryway, his gaze snagged on the corner of a document poking out of my bag.

The words were perfectly legible. Death certificate.

Lorenzo turned back, confused.

"Who died?"

He reached for the paper, about to draw it out and read it.

But his phone rang. Gemma's voice came through, small and choked with tears.

"Lorenzo, something's wrong at the club, the books, the customers, I can't handle all of it at once."

"It's all going to fall apart, isn't it? I'm so scared..."

Lorenzo's face went taut with worry.

"Don't cry. I'm on my way."

And just like that, he left. Didn't look back once.

Didn't even lock his study, the one room in the estate he never liked me setting foot in.

Something pulled me inside. Then something under the desk cut right through me.

That year, I'd been a made man's daughter with standing of my own, sent to gather what I could on the old Don who was stepping down from the head of an allied Family.

But the old man was proud and stubborn. He turned me away at his door.

Days of running between territories caught up with me, and I went lightheaded and faint. I collapsed in the garden of his social club.

It was Lorenzo who found me, who lifted me up. He told me the old Don was set in his ways and would never bend.

I'd hung my head, defeated. Then the next second, something sweet was pressed past my lips. A tangerine candy.

Lorenzo gave me a playful wink.

"But I admire anyone who takes the work seriously. So how about this. Bring your questions to me instead."

I found out later that he was the youngest man ever to head the Falcone bloodline. They called him the Surgeon, for how clean his work was.

Countless others had tried and failed to get an audience with the brilliant young Don. He'd made an exception only for me.

That was how Lorenzo and I began.

Later, we both grew busier and busier. One evening he looked at me, difficulty in his eyes.

"Adriana, I know making your own name in this thing of ours is your dream."

"But the old ones in the Family need looking after. Could you step back from the work? I swear I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

And I knew just as well that becoming the most feared Don in the city was his dream.

So I gave in.

I didn't vanish entirely. I let go of my own standing and took the quiet work, the logistics, the moving of cargo through allied ports, because at least that way I stayed close to the only world I'd ever loved.

On so many sleepless nights, I'd sit under the lamp and run my thumb over the dossier I'd built in my old life, the proof that I had once been someone in my own right.

Every time Lorenzo caught me doing it, guilt would flood his face, and he'd promise me again that he'd be good to me.

Now that same dossier, the one I'd treasured more than almost anything, was shoved under the corner of his desk to keep it from wobbling.

I opened his safe with Gemma's birthday.

On top was a thick manila envelope.

Inside, photographs. All kinds.

The two of them embracing. Kissing. Walking hand in hand along a beach.

Beneath the photos, receipts. An apartment he'd bought Gemma. The cash that had opened her nightclub. The renovations.

The place bled money every single month, and still he covered the gap.

The handwriting on the dossier was Lorenzo's.

"I will always clear the path for your dreams."

I stared at that line for a long, long time.

Five years flashed through my mind. Caring for his parents. Cooking, cleaning, keeping the estate running while the soldiers came and went through the side doors at all hours.

I thought about the envy that cut through me every time I saw the men and women I'd once worked alongside, the ones still gathering proof in the dark, still building their dossiers, still burning with the work I'd given up.

I laughed out loud.

So he did know how to protect someone's dreams.

I photographed everything, put it all back exactly as I'd found it, and finally made my decision.

"Sofia. I heard there's a placement open in the foreign territories. Central Asia, where our allies run their operations. Nobody's taken it yet."

"If you'll have me, I want to go."

A beat of silence on the line. Then her voice lit up.

"Yes. I always thought it was a waste when they buried you in the back rooms. This kind of placement doesn't come twice. It could be dangerous out there, but when you come home, your standing will be a different thing entirely."

I heard two soft taps of her fingers against something hard.

"Get yourself ready. You leave in a few days."

I hung up and started packing.

There was nothing left in this house I cared about.

Except the sweater. The last one my mother ever knitted for me. I was taking that.

She'd knitted me plenty of clothes when I was little. As I grew up, she got older. Her eyes weren't what they used to be.

I didn't want her straining herself, so I told her to stop.

Then I got pregnant, and suddenly I couldn't stand the cold.

She went and knitted me one anyway, in secret. Her eyes were bloodshot from the work, but she just waved me off.

"Homemade is warmer. I picked out the best yarn myself."

"You fuss over the baby in your belly, and I fuss over mine."

It hurt and it warmed me at the same time. I never could bring myself to wear it.

But now the sweater was gone.

I remembered coming home to find it missing. I'd been about to call Lorenzo and ask.

Then I saw Gemma's new post.

"Hehe, I just mentioned the babies were cold since they were just born, and a certain someone showed up with a sweater~"

"Thanking Daddy on behalf of the babies~ And of course, this Mommy's tailoring isn't too shabby either."

So that's where Lorenzo had gone. To throw a little party for her dogs.

In the photo, their heads were pressed together, bodies close.

Each of them cradling three puppies.

And I recognized it instantly.

The little dog outfits on those puppies had been cut from my mother's sweater.

When I pushed open the glass door of the club, Lorenzo and Gemma were sharing a single spoon over a slice of cake.

Lorenzo was a severe germaphobe.

At the estate, his plates were sterilized and stored apart from everyone else's. He never shared a utensil at the table, not with me, not with the men who'd bled for him.

Once, after I'd spent an entire day cleaning the house, I was so parched I picked up his glass and took a single sip of water.

He didn't say anything at the time. That night, the glass was in the trash.

He'd explained it afterward. Said it was a habit, the same care he took with everything that carried his name. The Surgeon, they called him, for how clean he kept his work.

Turns out the habit was selective.

Gemma spotted me and arched a brow, her smile dripping with sweetness she didn't mean.

"Oh, Adriana. You're here? Lorenzo and I have been close since we were children. We never really kept boundaries between us. Don't mind it, all right?"

"Lorenzo, what did I tell you? She'd never actually go through with severing the alliance."

"I mean, a woman who gave up her own standing in the Family, who can only survive on her husband's charity. Without you, how's she going to raise a child and care for her parents? And look at her, she followed you all the way down here. Clingy, isn't she?"

She pressed a hand flat to her collarbone, and her eyes flicked once toward the men by the door to see who was watching.

"Sigh. Next to that, I suppose my skin's just too thin. Nothing left for me to do but keep standing on my own two feet~"

Lorenzo pinched her nose, indulgent and fond.

"Always the clever one, aren't you? You've been a little troublemaker since we were children."

Then he turned to me, wearing the expression of a man prepared to forgive a child who didn't know any better.

"Alright, Adriana. Since you came here to make peace, I'll pretend I never heard that talk about severing the alliance."

"Go home and put the house in order. These pups were just born, still unsteady on their legs. I'm staying here with Gemma to watch over them a few more days."

Listening to the two of them, standing there in that dim little club he bankrolled with the Family's money, I almost laughed.

One played the kept woman without a shred of shame.

The other gift-wrapped his comare in honor like she was something sacred to the bloodline.

I didn't bother answering Lorenzo. I only gave him a thin, mocking smile.

"Since Miss Vitale is so gifted, taking a man who belongs to another woman is one thing. But did she really have to partner up with mine to steal my clothes too?"

"Tell me. This whole self-made-woman act of yours, is it a service you run for the home-wrecker trade specifically?"

A few patrons drifting near the back shelves, where the club fronted its little legitimate face to the world, turned to stare at Gemma.

"Wait, so this man isn't your boyfriend? Then the two of you sharing a spoon a minute ago, that's a little strange, isn't it?"

"Right? I just said you two made a sweet pair and you didn't deny it. Turns out he's got a wife?"

Gemma's face flushed deep red, cornered. Her hand rose flat against her collarbone, her chin trembling. But her eyes flicked once, quick, toward the patrons watching, measuring them, before the wounded look settled back into place.

The women looked her over with open disgust, set down what they'd been about to buy, and walked out into the street.

Gemma's eyes rimmed red. She turned to Lorenzo, all injury, and let it spill.

"Lorenzo, did she come here just to ruin me?"

"I only thought that sweater was warm and soft, perfect for the pups. She already spends so much of your money, she can have any clothes she likes. Why is she dragging my name through the mud like this?"

"Those were paying customers. How do they look at me now? How am I supposed to keep this place running after that?"

Lorenzo wiped her tears, aching for her, then turned the full weight of his attention on me. The room cooled by a degree.

"Adriana, I'm the one who took the sweater. Why are you taking it out on Gemma? It wasn't worth anything. When did you get this small?"

"You'll get bigger as the months go on and you won't fit it anyway. Have your mother knit you another."

"It's not some priceless piece. Why are you treating it like it's holy?"

That look on his face. Superior. Cold. The face of a Don who had decided, long ago, exactly where I ranked.

I couldn't take it anymore. I slapped him and screamed.

"Yes, what my mother made IS sacred! Because she can never knit me another one!"

"While you were here playing house with your precious childhood companion, while you'd rather watch her dog give birth than answer my calls when I begged you, my parents died!"

Lorenzo's eyes went wide. His arms dropped from Gemma on reflex.

"What did you say? How could your parents—"

Before he could finish, Gemma shoved me hard.

"Who do you think you are, putting hands on people?"

"It's a ratty old sweater. Nobody wants it. Here, take it back!"

She tore the wool off the pups and flung it into a soiled litter box the club's hired girl was about to carry out back.

"Parents dead? Please. I crossed paths with your mother and father at the grocer this very morning."

"I can't stand your kind, using a pregnancy as a free pass to lie, throw fits, and work your husband from every angle. You're a disgrace to every woman who ever stood on her own."

The litter box hadn't been emptied.

Clumps of waste clung to the wool, the stench rising thick and foul.

My mother's love, ruined beyond recognition.

"I, I didn't mean to. I didn't know the owner was going to—"

The girl shrank back from my bloodshot stare, too frightened to move.

Rage and hatred seared through me, scorching me from the inside out.

I turned and raised my hand high toward the woman who had started all of this.

But before my palm could reach Gemma's face,

Lorenzo's slap found mine first.

The crack rang out through the silent club.