On the eve of the Brancato crew's formal recognition by the Commission, Salvatore couldn't wait to throw a lavish celebration inside the family's private club. To top it off, he ordered his personal courier to hand out double cuts of the take, all in cash.

With a sweet smile, Vittoria personally passed neatly banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills to every associate in the room. But when she reached me, she suddenly shoved me aside.

"Move it. Filthy strays don't belong here."

Confused, I asked her what she meant.

Vittoria sneered and threw a folded slip of paper right in my face — the mark of exile, my name struck from the crew. "A shameless tramp like you has no right to a cut. Get lost before you make us sick."

As she spat the words, the wide projected screen behind her lit up with a series of intimate photos of me and one of the family's biggest silent partners.

Then came the list of cuts. The numbers on the screen stung my eyes. Everyone had taken at least a six-figure share, except me. My column was marked with a glaring red zero.

I clenched my fists and looked up at Salvatore where he stood near the bar, a glass of something dark untouched in his hand.

"Are you sure you want to cast me out — tonight?"

——

I asked as the screen kept cycling through those photos of me and the partner.

In the frames, I was either walking side by side with the men, touching glasses in a toast, or, worse, being held around the waist as I stepped into a hotel on one of their arms.

Hearing my question, Salvatore dragged his gaze off the screen and looked at me coldly, saying nothing. The music had died somewhere behind us. No one moved.

"Are you sure, Salvatore?" I asked again.

Every eye in the room turned to him, filled with sympathy and pity.

Ignoring the looks from his associates, he slowly stepped forward until he was towering over me. His voice came out cold as the ice settling in his glass. "Adriana, what right do you have to stay in this crew? Every bit of what we've built came from work, from blood. Everyone earned it. Everyone but you."

"Am I short on money? On care for you? Is that why you chose to shame me like this in front of my own men? Don't tell me these are the reason you wouldn't come home and be the devoted wife I asked for."

He suddenly pulled a stack of photos from inside his jacket and slammed them hard against my face. The sharp edges grazed my skin before they scattered across the floor. He straightened his tie, smoothed his lapel, as though the gesture could settle what he'd just done.

A sting shot through me. I raised my hand and touched my cheek. My fingers came away stained with red.

"They tell me it was a noble thing, bringing this family's name before the Commission. But I won't let a disgrace like you ruin it, even if you're the woman I was bound to marry."

I looked at the cold, dignified man before me, still convinced he was only misled by the pictures. Patiently, I explained. "Salvatore, others may not believe me. But you? Everything I built came from my own work. It has nothing to do with those photos."

"Your own work?" Vittoria cut in, her tone dripping with mockery. Two fingers brushed the base of her throat, just for a breath, before her smile locked back into place. "And what kind of 'work' would that be? Your talents in bed? We've all heard just how 'deep' your dealings with the partners run."

Laughter broke around us, a few voices murmuring their agreement across the smoke-thick room.

"Exactly. Who knows how many partners' beds she crawled through to bring in those numbers? And to think we used to look up to her, learn from her on the quiet."

There's a saying: kick a man once he's already down. I never thought the very associates I'd once broken bread with would prove that proverb so perfectly.

I clenched my teeth and forced myself calm. "Those photos prove nothing. My dealings with them were business, nothing more."

"Business?" Vittoria bent and picked a photo off the floor, the one where a man had his arm around me as we walked into the hotel. "Bedroom business, you mean. Then explain this one. How do you talk your way out of this?"

She went on with a sneer. "This is a still from a high-definition video. Shall I play the whole thing for the room?"

I stared at the photo a moment. Then, without meaning to, I let out a laugh of pure relief.

Because the man in that picture was my older brother.

That night, I'd been drunk. I'd meant to call Salvatore to come for me. Instead, I had called Lorenzo.

It just so happened that my brother had come from Emperor Bay that night, sent by our parents to talk sense into me, hoping I'd stop defying the family. Lorenzo arrived just in time to pull me out of a den where a group of men had been circling, looking to take a piece of a Valente daughter who'd wandered too far from her father's protection.

Who would have thought that when he brought me to a hotel to sleep it off, some hungry set of eyes would catch it on film?

No wonder Salvatore had gone strange after that night. Distant, watchful, though he still forced the old warmth into his voice when the crew was looking.

Turns out he'd been holding it in the whole time. He waited. He waited until I'd handed him the clients that mattered, until I'd quietly leaned on my family's name to grease the Commission and put him on the path to being made. Tonight, with the recognition ceremony a breath away, he finally chose to strike.

I was disappointed by his lack of trust in me.

Yet he was also the first man I had ever truly fallen for. I don't want us to drift apart because of a misunderstanding.

Even more, I didn't want my parents to learn that my first all-consuming love had died before it ever truly began. I had fled Emperor Bay to escape the alliance union they'd arranged for me, a marriage bargained between two families like a shipment of cargo.

I wanted to choose my own man, to stand beside someone as an equal, not be chained inside a loveless pact sealed in blood. But I'd never told a soul. Not even Salvatore.

I was afraid that if he learned I was a daughter of the Valente dynasty, the true power sitting silent beneath his rise, he would feel small, overwhelmed, crushed under the weight of it.

Since I was a girl, every man near me had only wanted me for the name I carried. I hated those calculated shows of devotion, those compliments with a knife hidden inside them. But Salvatore. When he looked at me, his eyes were filled with stars.

The memory of how beautiful things once were made me laugh, and once I started I couldn't stop.

"What are you laughing at?" Salvatore's brow drew tight, his voice thick with disdain. He tugged his tie straight, smoothed his lapel, the way he always did when the ground shifted under him. "How could you laugh at a time like this?"

I lifted my head and met his gaze head-on. "Do you really think I'm the kind of woman who sleeps her way to the top?"

"Then what else did you do?" A cold scoff. "You think there's anything left in you worth my respect?"

It felt like an invisible hand had clenched around my heart, squeezing so tight that even breathing turned to pain.

I drew a slow breath and spoke evenly. "The man in the photo. He's my brother."

"Your 'brother'?" Vittoria broke into laughter. Two fingers drifted to the base of her throat, resting there a moment before she recovered the smile. "You think we're fools? Passing off some sworn brother as blood? What, do you call every man you crawl into bed with 'brother'? I'll give you that much, it does add a little spice to the arrangement."

The laughter around me grew sharper. Someone whistled. In a room like this, laughter was permission, and permission ran downhill from the man at the top.

Salvatore looked at me with nothing but contempt. "Enough. Stop humiliating yourself. Take your papers and get out. From this moment, you and I are strangers. Cast out. No family will touch you."

I closed my fist around the letter, and inside there was nothing but a cold, hollow emptiness. For five years I'd buried my true name, played the low-level associate, working to build his crew as fast as any hand could.

Now, after I'd personally paved his road to the top of the ranks, he was ready to discard me like a tool worn smooth from use. I could stomach losing. What I couldn't stomach was being made a fool. I'd write off five years of my youth, spent on an ungrateful upstart who'd forgotten who fed him.

"Salvatore, you'll regret this."

My quiet murmur reached him, and he reacted as though I'd told the funniest joke in the city.

"Regret?" He let out a mocking laugh. "The only thing I regret is ever crossing paths with a faithless whore like you."

With that, he put out his hand toward Vittoria. The two traded a knowing look and walked hand in hand toward the center of the hall.

Only then did I see it. Salvatore's tailored suit and Vittoria's low-cut gown were a matched set, cut from the same designer's cloth. He raised their laced fingers high, his voice pitched loud and sure so it carried to every silent partner in the room.

"Tomorrow is the most important day in this Family's history. Tomorrow the Commission makes us. None of it would stand without the loyalty of everyone in this room. Let's keep rising together."

Thunderous applause broke across the hall, followed by wave after wave of cheers.

The praises rolled through the private dining room, associate after associate lifting their glasses to Salvatore and Vittoria, the golden pair, the Boss and the woman at his side. Every syllable landed clean in my ears. Salvatore's gaze swept past me without a flicker of recognition. I might have been some nameless face pulled in off the street.

Staring at the man I had spent five years building into a Boss, I finally understood why my father always said my judgment was lacking. Turns out, they were right. I had been utterly blind.

I never once suspected that Vittoria, Salvatore's ever-loyal courier, the girl who carried his messages and kept his ledgers, had been sharing his bed the whole time.

But being the daughter of Don Valente, my blindness didn't prove I couldn't move among the families. Whatever else was true, I had lifted this man to the edge of recognition by the Commission, and I could just as easily let him fall from that height.

Clutching the folded oath of silence Enzo had shoved at me, I turned to leave that suffocating room.

I had barely taken a step when Enzo Marchetti, the crew's bookkeeper, planted himself in front of me, a false smile stretched across his face.

"Adriana, no need to run off so fast."

He licked his lips, cleared his throat, and adjusted the set of his collar, his voice reaching for a firmness it didn't own. "The Family has its rules. Before you walk, you sign the oath. Everything you touched while you were with us, none of it connects back to us. And you swear the vow. No sitting down with any other family, no whispering our clients into someone else's ear once you're gone."

Not long ago, every man in this crew knew me as Salvatore's intended, the woman whose name opened doors to silent partners and associate Dons. They treated me like glass they were afraid to crack.

Enzo most of all. He used to duck his head and call me Signora Brancato, sweet as spilled honey. That was before. Now he looked down at me with a satisfied little smirk, as if belittling me might buy back some scrap of his own standing.

I took in the whole pathetic performance and answered him cold. "An oath? A vow? What in God's name makes you think I'd ever put my name to either?"

Enzo's smile died at once, his voice sharpening. "Why? Because of your dirty little arrangements. The Family's already shown you mercy, letting you walk instead of settling it the old way. Don't mistake mercy for weakness."

I let out a mocking laugh. "Dirty arrangements? You have proof? Or do you just mean a few photographs stripped of their context?"

"Proof?" Vittoria came sauntering over on her heels, one manicured finger stabbing toward my phone. "Isn't the proof sitting right there in your hand? God knows how many of our contacts you've hoarded. The second you step outside, you'll start working them one by one, buying yourself a place with some other crew."

The words were barely out of her mouth before Enzo lunged for my phone. I was caught flat-footed. Before I could pull back, it was gone from my fingers.

"Give it back."

Vittoria plucked it out of Enzo's hand and skipped back a step, that smug curl still on her lips. "Look how nervous you are now. Must be plenty in here you don't want anyone laying eyes on."

She turned to Salvatore for my passcode. She tried his birthday, then mine, then the anniversary they'd all toasted so warmly, and still the screen held shut. Losing patience, Salvatore snatched the phone from her grip and barked at the two soldiers by the door to hold me still.

He held it up to his face. After the screen refused him again and again, it fell back to the keypad.

"What's the password?"

Since the day we became each other's, my passcode had never once changed. It was the date he first told me he wanted me. How fitting that he'd forgotten. And yet I wasn't surprised at all.

Failing to open my phone in front of his own men only deepened the humiliation. His face darkened, thunder gathering in it, his pride crumbling by the second. He straightened his tie, smoothed his lapel, buying himself a moment.

"Adriana, you keep swearing those photos are some misunderstanding. Then why did you go and change your password behind my back?" The accusation had grown tiresome past bearing.

"It's the date you first told me you wanted me," I said.

Salvatore went still, his expression shifting as he clawed at the memory of that day.

However hard he reached for it, it wasn't there. His face twisted, a chaos of feeling running through it, like a painting someone had ruined mid-stroke.

I wrenched free of the soldiers' hands and took my phone back from his. Salvatore watched in silence as I unlocked it without effort. His lips parted, as if there were something he meant to say. No words came.