My Mother’s Dying Wish Was My Happiness,Not Your Ring

The moment my hand struck out, whatever softening Lorenzo Falcone's cold face had allowed me shattered completely.

He crossed the marble in three strides, ripped the suitcase from my hands, and hurled it to the floor.

The clothes inside scattered across the polished stone like something gutted open.

His handmade leather shoe crushed a dumpling flat as he came at me. I clenched my teeth so hard they ached, staring at the sole of his shoe. In a house where soldiers stood silent at every door, no one moved. No one ever moved when the heir's temper turned.

"Adriana, my patience has limits. Whatever's between the two of us, leave innocent people out of it!"

My hands shook, and my whole body went rigid where I stood. My thumb found the bare base of my ring finger and pressed there, against the spot where no ring had ever been placed.

Bianca's eyes reddened, tears welling up as she looked at me, the picture of innocence. Her fingers drifted to the pendant at her throat, brushing it once, as if to make sure it was still there.

"I'm sorry, Adriana, I only looked up that bus ticket. I'd wanted to send a car to bring her in myself, I never imagined—"

The words trailed off, and her tears dropped one after another, splattering onto the floor, mixing with the spilled filling.

"I was only afraid Mr. Falcone was being deceived. The Falcone name is a special case, after all. There are so many who use a dying mother to force their way into a Family. I just—"

She looked at Lorenzo, biting her lip, shaking her head.

My gaze turned colder and colder. When I spoke, my voice had lost all warmth.

"Lorenzo, you think I'm lying to you too?"

He said nothing, but the look on his face was the clearest answer.

My mother's papers were real, filed at a clinic that owed the Family nothing, in a town no Falcone soldier had ever set foot in. No bought doctor's seal, no forged page.

I'd gone with her for the diagnosis myself, half a year ago. There was no faking it.

So Bianca had set her sights on my mother's bus ticket instead.

She hadn't flown, that much was true.

A plane seat cost what a humble woman couldn't spare. How could she have brought herself to pay for one?

To save money, to scrape together something to send me into the Falcone Estate with, she'd dragged her sick body through more than thirty hours wedged into a cramped coach seat.

All to attend a daughter's union that didn't even exist.

Yet even for a single line in the act, Lorenzo hadn't been willing to play along with me. He'd chosen to break his word instead.

When I really thought about it, he'd never once returned my feelings from the start. The ending was sealed the moment we met.

I'd combed through every little detail of our life together, hunting for proof that he loved me, lying to myself.

Five years, everything kept its uneasy peace. A kept woman, never made part of the Family, never given a name at the table.

But from the moment Bianca appeared, that surface balance was finally broken.

The acting Underboss of the Falcone Family started to have joys and sorrows like an ordinary man.

He started learning to love someone.

When Bianca's stomach hurt, he'd ask me what he should do.

When he anticipated she might have a reaction, he'd have the medicine waiting in the car beforehand.

He'd bring Bianca to every sit-down, every Family banquet in the private hall, introducing her to capos and made men alike as his perfect right hand.

Next to her, I was like a rat in a gutter, reeking of filth.

Even if I offered up my pride with both hands, letting him and his sweetheart trample it as they pleased, I still couldn't buy a place in this fight.

What I couldn't have, I didn't want anymore.

The spot where the bag had struck Bianca swelled and reddened fast, tears rolling down one by one.

Lorenzo cursed out loud on the spot, furious.

But his hands didn't stop. With practiced ease, he took the salve from her bag, dabbed it on his fingertips, and smoothed it onto Bianca's face.

After soothing her, he turned to me, his voice edged with threat.

"Adriana, don't push your luck. Bianca is innocent. Yesterday, the first thing she said when she came to after collapsing at the hospital was for me to hurry to the union and find you."

"Look at yourself right now. You're nothing but a jealous shrew! How can you face her after she did that for you?!"

"Adriana, I'll say it one last time. Apologize to her!"

"Make a scene like this again, and you'll get out of here!"

I acted as if I couldn't hear a word, just kept my head down, gathering the luggage that had spilled across the floor.

The minutes ticked by, and somewhere in that silent house a clock counted them out, each one too loud. Lorenzo's patience ran dry.

He took two long strides to stand over me, bent down, and yanked a fistful of the long hair at my shoulders, his features savage, twisted, terrifying.

A tearing pain shot through my scalp. I clenched my teeth so I wouldn't cry out, my eyes shot through with bloodred veins, glaring at Lorenzo. My thumb was still pressed to that bare spot on my finger, the only thing holding me upright.

His voice was vicious. "Can't hear me? Or you don't know how to apologize? Adriana, I really have spoiled you rotten!

You wanted the dumplings your mother wrapped, didn't you? Then how about you taste them right now!"

I bit down hard, but my head was forced down against the floor and ground into it, beyond my control.

My lips crushed out of shape, tears mixed with flour clinging to my face.

But Lorenzo still wasn't satisfied. He erupted, dragging my head up in front of him with one hand while the other rained slaps across my face. Not one soldier in that room turned to look. In this life, you learned what you were not permitted to see.

A bloody sweetness welled up in my throat, and the blood on my forehead blurred my sight.

"Open your mouth, then! Weren't you so tough? Come on, open up and let me see if my aim's any good?"

With that, he snatched a dumpling from the floor that was still mostly whole and ground it into my face until it was nothing but mashed filling.

"Smell good? Enjoying your meal? Now apologize to Bianca!"

"Or I'll send your mother straight back to wherever she crawled out from!"