There was an old code in the neighborhood: if you weren't married by thirty, Don Greco would call you home to sit across the table from the matches he'd chosen for you.

When I told Lorenzo Vitale about it, he let out a cold laugh.

"What is this neighborhood of yours, some kind of medieval cult?"

"Adriana Bellini, I told you I'd marry you, and I will. But cornering me into it is a completely different thing."

He drew a ring from his pocket and tossed it to the soldier-girl waiting by the door, without so much as a glance.

She caught it, her cheeks flushing pink.

"I was going to ask you, actually. But since you want to play it like this, let's take some time to cool off."

The ring I'd waited years for, and he just handed it to someone else.

For a moment, my mind went blank.

Lorenzo strolled out of my office, the corner of his mouth curved in a smug, victorious smile.

Gemma held the ring out to me.

I didn't take it.

"Keep it. He bought it for you anyway, didn't he?"

"Go ahead, put it on. I'm sure it fits perfectly."

The color drained from her face.

I showed her out.

Before I closed the door, I said: "Tell your Mr. Vitale that he and I are done."

……

That evening, Lorenzo came in from his rounds to find me packing.

His step faltered when he saw the two large suitcases in front of me.

"How come you didn't wait for me today?"

There it was again.

He always had this ability to turn the page on his own, as if nothing had happened.

And I was supposed to take the out he offered and step right down with him.

Pretend everything was fine. Play the devoted couple again.

But I was done pretending.

"Didn't your little soldier pass along my message?"

His brows knotted instantly, like I'd touched a nerve.

"I'm trying to talk to you like a normal person, and you just have to be passive-aggressive about it?"

"Gemma is practically your sister. You're the one who vouched for her, who brought her into the Family. What's with the attitude now?"

He wasn't wrong.

I was the one who'd brought Gemma Russo into the operation.

She was from the same old neighborhood as me. Don Greco had always told us that those of us who left the quarter were to look out for each other.

So when she finished her schooling and had no place, no one to stand for her,

I gave her a place in the operation myself.

She was sweet and eager to please, and I was glad to bring her along.

Until I noticed the way she looked at Lorenzo, her gaze growing softer, more lingering, more lovesick with each passing day.

I recognized that look.

Lorenzo had been the golden boy back in the early years,

and I'd watched countless girls look at him the exact same way.

But his eyes had never landed on any of them, not even for a second.

So I chalked it up to a young girl's crush and let it go.

Then her mistakes started piling up, the kind that cost the Family money and standing,

and I gave her a few words of correction. Nothing harsh.

She didn't talk back. She just stood there crying while I spoke.

But Lorenzo wouldn't have it.

He raised his voice at me in front of the whole crew for the first time.

"She's just a kid. You could've gone easy on her."

"She's practically blood. What are you doing, throwing your rank around like some petty tyrant?"

I was so furious I laughed, but I didn't back down.

"Do you have any idea how many people in this operation have had to clean up after her mistakes?"

He waved his hand dismissively.

"Fine then. Gemma answers to me from now on. She's mine to run."

He glanced around at the crew who'd gathered to watch the show.

"And if anyone else has a problem, you bring it to me. Stop whispering behind each other's backs."

"If you can earn your keep, earn it. If you can't, you know where the door is."

He walked off with long, sweeping strides, like a capo back from a clean job.

Gemma trailed after him, worship written across every line of her retreating figure.

……

I looked up. Lorenzo was staring down at me, towering, imperious.

Somewhere along the way, everything between us had stopped being about right or wrong and become about him winning.

Every conversation a sit-down he had to walk away from on top. Every disagreement a war he had to take.

He wasn't the same man who'd once whispered to me in our cramped little rented rooms above the old quarter: "The only person I'll ever lose to is you."

I glanced at my phone. The travel confirmation was still on the screen.

I'd be back in the old neighborhood soon.

I couldn't be bothered to argue with him.

"You're right. I was being unreasonable."

"It won't happen again."

When he saw my reaction, his expression went blank for a split second.

I figured he'd been bracing for me to do what I always did:

demand to know when he'd finally make it official between us,

demand to know why he and Gemma Russo were still so tangled up,

but the one thing he hadn't expected was me conceding.

After a few seconds of silence, he tossed out a "Suit yourself" and walked out.

He didn't come back to our rooms that night.

The next morning I went down to the operation as usual.

I could let go of Lorenzo, but the business he and I had built carried every ounce of my blood and sweat. We'd sworn it into existence together, partners in trust, and my forty-nine points were no small thing.

Even if I was leaving, I needed to make sure everything was in order first.

Besides, I'd still be drawing my cut of the earnings, year after year.

I was in the middle of working out who I'd raise up to run the floor in my place, so I could keep my hand in from the old quarter, when Renata Conti appeared at the end of the corridor, her face drained of color.

She was a seasoned associate who'd been in the trenches with me through more arrangements and sit-downs than I could count.

I had never seen her look this rattled.

"Adriana, last night we were sending the tribute figures up to Lorenzo. Gemma said he was asleep, that she'd handle the handoff herself."

"But she let our bottom-line numbers go straight to the connect along with everything else."

"Now they're demanding we shave twenty percent off the tribute, and our margin barely clears thirty."

Her voice cracked.

"We've been working this arrangement for six months. If we hold the line, we eat the loss. If we walk, we lose the connect for good."

I nodded as she spoke and pushed open the door to Lorenzo's office.

Gemma was lying on her side on the sofa while Lorenzo spooned sweet wine into her mouth, one careful sip at a time.

That sofa was the same one Lorenzo had brought in for me back when we first put the operation together,

back when he'd had to force me to rest.

He'd said: "This room is yours. You close your eyes here, no one disturbs you."

So even when we moved the operation, bought our own building, gutted it and rebuilt it from the studs,

I'd had that sofa moved here with everything else.

Now another woman was stretched out on it, and he was at her side, tending to her like something precious.

Just the way he'd once tended to me.

Something caught in my chest, but strangely, it didn't hurt anymore.

The moment Gemma saw me, she sat up.

"Adriana, please don't misunderstand. I felt so guilty I fainted, and that's the only reason Lorenzo was giving me the wine."

I still remembered that the first time she met Lorenzo, she'd called him "the boss's husband." Somewhere along the way it had become just "Lorenzo."

I didn't acknowledge her. I walked straight to Lorenzo's desk and laid the report down in front of him, slow and deliberate, so the sound of it would sit in the room.

"At the price they're asking now, if we want to keep this connect, we bleed a hundred and seventy thousand."

I swept my gaze over both of them.

"Which one of you is covering that?"

Gemma's fingers drifted to her lower lip, and her eyes reddened on cue.

"It's all my fault. I just didn't want to wake Lorenzo. He was so exhausted, I felt sick over it."

"I'll go to Mr. Lee myself, right now. I'll beg him if I have to."

Lorenzo stared at the file with a deep frown but made no move to stop her.

Renata and I stood right where we were, and neither of us lifted a finger either.

Gemma froze, stuck. She'd backed herself into a corner with nowhere left to go.

I folded my arms and watched her.

"Gemma, crying and begging don't close arrangements."

She tossed aside the cashmere blanket and took two steps before crumpling to the floor.

The performance was so clumsy that engaging with it would've insulted my own intelligence.

But Lorenzo, the man they called a brilliant earner, bought every second of it.

He helped Gemma up and settled her gently back onto the sofa.

"Adriana, you always have to be so aggressive."

“Does the whole world have to revolve around you?”

I freed one hand and rapped my knuckles against the polished mahogany of his desk.

“Cut the talk that has nothing to do with the arrangement. A hundred and seventy thousand. What's your plan?”

His eyes were bloodshot.

“If honoring the connect means we bleed money, then we cut the connect loose.”

I let out a cold laugh.

“Do you even remember how many bottles we shared, how many nights we sat up till dawn to bring that tributary into the fold in the first place?”

“And it isn't only this one arrangement. We have other pacts running with them. If we walk, how many more hundred-and-seventy-thousand losses are we staring down?”

“Lorenzo, have you completely lost your mind?”

He shot me an impatient glance, muttering “so small” under his breath,

and then,

pulled a bank card from inside his jacket and flung it across at my face.

“It's just a hundred and seventy thousand. I'll cover it for her. Happy now?”

My cheek stung, but I was eerily calm.

The boy from the old neighborhood who once thought a twelve-dollar plate of fried rice was too rich for his blood,

now tossing a hundred and seventy thousand across the desk without blinking.

He'd already forgotten how many people's livelihoods sat in our hands.

This was never just about the money.

Or maybe he knew. He just didn't care.

Since he didn't care about a hundred and seventy thousand,

what about a hundred times that?

I wanted to see if he'd be just as indifferent then.

I met my oldest friend, Francesca Moretti, for afternoon coffee at a quiet table in her father's club.

She hadn't even finished cursing Lorenzo's name when a message came in from Renata.

“Adriana, get back to the office now.”

The moment I reached the door of my own office,

I saw Gemma directing two crew members to haul out my desk.

Pacts, documents, the whole record of it, scattered across the floor.

Years of work, built up piece by piece.

Who the hell did she think she was?

“Put everything down. Now.”

I closed the distance in three strides and slapped Gemma across the face.

“Who told you to touch my things?”

Gemma clutched her cheek, but her eyes were defiant.

“Lorenzo said you lost a major arrangement and you don't deserve this office anymore. He wants you working out in the open floor with the rest of the crew.”

He must have heard the commotion.

Lorenzo came in.

He took one look at the mess on the floor, and something flickered behind his eyes.

“Gemma, I told you to give her word. Who said you could move her things?”

Gemma lowered her hand, baring the red print on her cheek, and looked up at him with wide, wounded eyes. Her fingers drifted to her lower lip, and the tears welled right on cue.

He caved instantly.

“Adriana, this was my call. If you want to take it out on someone, take it out on me.”

“But rules are rules. Gemma passed along our tribute figures, fine, but it was someone on your crew who put them in her hands. You bear direct responsibility.”

He sighed, settling both hands on my shoulders.

“I heard you booked a ticket home.”

“I can't go back with you, though.”

“Why don't you use it as a reason to take a few days, go see the old quarter, hm?”

I shook his hands off me.

“Who asked you to come? I'm going home because——”

He scoffed. “To find a husband?”

“Drop the act. Gemma already told me. There's no old code in your neighborhood about a woman having to come back and marry before thirty.”

Gemma chimed in. “Adriana, don't hold it against me for telling him. I just couldn't stand by and watch you lie to him anymore.”

I looked her over, calm and measured. The room had gone quiet, the crew on the floor suddenly very busy with nothing.

A designer suit. Chanel at her ears. A Louis Vuitton on her arm.

None of it matched what the Family paid her,

and all of it was a far cry from the girl I'd first met in the old neighborhood.

Back then, she'd wept with gratitude because I'd vouched for her, covered her way in.

I bought her first decent set of clothes.

I walked her in myself the day she opened her first account.