For a woman who looked like she’d never lifted anything heavier than a Centurion card, Lola moved with shocking speed.

The slap didn't just connect; the crack of her palm against my cheek echoed through the marble lobby like a gunshot.

My head snapped to the side. The impact was blinding, a sharp, burning heat instantly spreading across my skin.

Dead silence fell over the room.

The security guards near the elevators immediately found the floor tiles fascinating. They knew who Lola was sleeping with. They knew who signed their checks.

I tasted copper in my mouth.

"You civilian rat," Lola spat, her face twisted in ugly triumph.

"You think flashing a plastic badge scares me? You’re a glorified maid who thinks she has a shot at the Prince."

She snatched out her phone.

"You want to see what Dante really thinks of you?" she asked, her voice rising to a piercing screech. "Hey! Everyone! Look at this!"

She waved her phone at the reception staff, at the security guards, at her friends.

"Look at what my fiancé says about his stalker!"

She shoved the screen inches from my nose.

It was a text thread with Dante.

*Dante: Ugh, I have to go into the office early tomorrow. Seraphina messed up the shipping logs again.*

*Lola: Why don't you just fire her, baby?*

*Dante: I can't yet. She's a workhorse. She does all the boring crap I don't want to deal with. She’s useful, like a stapler. But god, she bores me to death. You’re my true release, babe. The only woman who makes me feel alive.*

I stared at the words.

*Like a stapler.*

I had spent seven years scrubbing his sins.

I had rewritten ledgers to keep the RICO investigators blind. I had negotiated with corrupt unions to keep his trucks moving. I had stood between him and federal prison every single day.

And to him, I was office supplies.

Something inside my chest—that soft, hopeful creature I’d nurtured since university—didn't just break. It disintegrated.

It turned to cold, grey ash.

"See?" Lola laughed, pulling the phone back. "He keeps you around because you’re a mule. But no one wants to marry the mule."

The receptionist, a girl I had helped get maternity leave for last year, covered her mouth to hide a giggle.

"She really thought she had a chance," Bella whispered, loud enough for the back row. "It’s kind of sad. She doesn't get the aesthetic. She’s not... Mob Wife material."

They were recording now. Three or four phones were pointed at me, capturing my humiliation for Instagram stories.

"Security!" Bella screamed, pointing a manicured finger at the door. "Throw this trash out! She's harassing the future Don's wife!"

Two guards stepped forward hesitantly.

"Miss Vitiello..." one started, using the fake last name I used at work. "Maybe you should go."

I touched my cheek. It was throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

I looked at Lola.

"Are you sure those texts are true, Lola?" I asked softly.

"Of course they're true!"

"Because seven years ago," I said, my voice dangerously steady, "Dante sat outside my dorm room for three weeks begging for a date. He chased me, Lola. I didn't chase him."

Lola rolled her eyes. "That was college. People experiment in college. He grew up. He realized he needed a Queen, not a clerk."

"A Queen," I repeated.

"Yes," Lola said, stepping into my personal space until I could smell her expensive perfume. "And you are trespassing in my kingdom."

"Your kingdom is built on sand," I told her, my voice steady despite the adrenaline spiking in my blood.

Lola’s eyes widened, the whites showing all around. The veins in her neck strained against her expensive skin, ruining the facade of elegance she tried so hard to maintain.

"Get her!" she shrieked.

Bella lunged, her fingers digging into my bicep. Another girl clamped a fist into my hair.

I tried to twist away, my self-defense training kicking in automatically—shift weight, drop center of gravity. But I was outnumbered. Bella drove a boot into the back of my knee, and my leg buckled.

I went down, hitting the hard marble floor with a bone-jarring thud that rattled my teeth.

"Hold her down!" Lola commanded.

I felt hands pressing my shoulders into the cold stone, pinning me like a specimen. My blazer tore with a sharp *rip*.

Lola stood over me, looking like a vengeful deity in white chiffon.

"You need to learn your place," she said, breathing hard, her chest heaving. "You think you can just walk in here and disrespect me? I am going to be the First Lady of this family."

She leaned down and slapped me again.

Left cheek. Right cheek.

My head rang like a struck bell. The humiliation was worse than the pain. I was Seraphina Vitiello. My father cut the tongues out of men who spoke to me with the wrong tone. And here I was, being beaten by a cocktail waitress in a lobby I technically owned.

"I’m going to scar that boring little face of yours," Lola hissed, her spittle landing on my cheek. "Maybe then Dante will stop pitying you."

I looked up at her. My lip was split. I could feel blood trickling down my chin, hot and metallic.

"If you touch me again," I whispered, my voice a cold razor, "you will pray for death."

Lola threw her head back and laughed. It was a sharp, manic sound.

"Did you hear that? The stapler is threatening me!"

She raised her foot, aiming her sharp stiletto heel at my hand.

Then she stopped.

Her eyes caught the glint of silver at my throat.

It was an old locket. Tarnished silver, engraved with a simple butterfly. It wasn't flashy. It didn't have diamonds.

But it was the only thing my mother had left me before she died in a car bomb meant for my father.

"What is this garbage?" Lola sneered.

She reached down and yanked the chain.

"No!" I screamed, struggling against the hands holding me down, thrashing violently. "Don't touch that!"

The chain snapped with a sickening *pop*.

Lola held the locket up to the light, dangling it like a dead insect.

"So cheap," she said. "Dante buys me diamonds. And you wear... tin?"

"Give it back," I choked out. The air felt too thin, my lungs burning. That locket held my mother's picture. It was a sacred relic.

"It’s ugly," Lola decided. "Just like you."

She dropped it on the floor.

Time seemed to slow down. I watched the silver heart hit the marble. It didn't break.

Then Lola lifted her foot.

She brought her heel down, hard, right in the center of the butterfly.

*Crunch.*

The sound of metal twisting and glass shattering was louder than any gunshot I had ever heard.

My heart stopped.

Lola ground her heel into the fragments, twisting back and forth, ensuring nothing remained but dust and scrap metal.

"Oops," she said, smiling down at me. "I guess I broke your toy. Now you have nothing."

I stopped struggling. The hands holding me felt distant. The pain in my face vanished.

A cold, dark void opened up in the center of my chest. It swallowed the love I had for Dante. It swallowed my patience. It swallowed the girl who wanted a normal life.

I looked at the crushed silver on the floor.

The Pact was over.

Omertà was broken.

War had begun.

My burner phone started buzzing inside my purse, which had been kicked a few feet away.

Lola flicked her wrist at Bella. "Get that."

Bella snatched the cheap black phone and handed it to her mistress.

Lola looked at the screen, her lip curling in disgust.

"Caller ID says 'Papa'," she mocked. "Aww. Is the little girl going to cry to her daddy?"

I lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. The cold from the marble was seeping into my bones, numbing the pain, grounding me.

"Answer it," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Hollow. Dead.

Lola laughed. "You want me to talk to him? Fine. I’ll tell him to come pick up his trash."

She swiped the screen and hit the speaker button.

"Hello?" Lola screeched into the microphone. "Listen here, old man. Your daughter is a psycho stalker. You need to come get her before I have security throw her in the dumpster where she belongs."

Silence on the other end.

It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of a predator holding its breath before the strike.

Then, a sound.

*CRASH.*

It was the distinct, wet crunch of heavy crystal shattering against a wall.

"Who is this?"

The voice was deep, gravelly, and vibrated with a suppressed violence that made the air in the lobby drop ten degrees.

Lola didn't notice. She was too high on her own power trip.

"I’m the future Mrs. Moretti," she announced. "And you need to teach your daughter some manners. She’s embarrassing herself. Tell her to stay away from Dante, or I’ll make sure she never works in this city again."

"Is she alive?" the voice asked.

It was a simple question, devoid of inflection.

"Barely," Lola laughed. "I had to teach her a lesson. Touched her up a bit. Broke her ugly little necklace."

"You touched her," the voice repeated.

It wasn't a question anymore. It was a confirmation of a death sentence.

"Yeah, I slapped her. What are you going to do about it, grandpa? Sue me?"

"Put her on the phone," the voice commanded.

Lola rolled her eyes but held the phone down toward my face, like she was offering a treat to a dog.

"Daddy wants to say bye-bye."

I looked at the black plastic.

"Papa," I whispered.

"Seraphina," my father said. His voice cracked, just a fraction. "Did they take the necklace?"

"Yes," I said. "They crushed it."

A long exhale on the other end. It sounded like a dragon waking up.

"The pact is void," my father said. "Burn them."

Something sparked in my chest, melting the ice.

"Burn them all," I agreed.

"I am three minutes away," he said. "Stay down. The sky is about to fall."

The line went dead.

Lola scoffed and threw the phone onto the floor, smashing it next to the remains of my mother’s locket.

"Drama queen," she muttered. "Like father, like daughter."

I closed my eyes and listened.

Far off in the distance, over the hum of the city traffic, I heard a rhythmic thumping sound.

*Thwup. Thwup. Thwup.*

It was getting louder, a beating heart of steel closing in.