Seven Years of Lies, a False Heir in My Belly

It left Vittoria, off to the side, looking faintly, unmistakably caught out.

I turned to glance at her and saw only a small bruise across her forehead.

I had stood freezing in the snow for over two hours, and half my leg had gone numb.

Dinner was lavish, every dish one of my favorites, the long table set the way the Marchetti matriarch kept it for blood that mattered.

You could tell Salvatore and Carmela had put real thought into welcoming the bride of this house.

At the table, Lorenzo stayed at my side the whole time.

The whole family talked over each other, cheerful, debating what to name the heir who would one day carry the Marchetti name.

I didn't remember how anything tasted. I didn't remember what they decided.

All I remembered was the jealousy clawing in Vittoria's eyes across the table.

After dinner, I rested alone in the guest room while the soldiers settled into their watch beyond the door.

Vittoria shoved the door open and drove her foot hard into my injured leg.

I rolled on the floor in pain while she stood over me, her face twisting.

"Elena, there's something I have to tell you tonight."

"That heir in your belly isn't yours. It's mine and Lorenzo's!"

"So you don't get a say in what we name it!"

"You crippled little nothing. You worthless thing."

"Eight years ago I took the man you loved most right out of your hands!"

"And you didn't dare make a sound."

"Look at you now. Still worthless."

"Marco was mine, and Lorenzo is mine too!"

"You were never anything but a joke."

"Oh, and one more thing."

"Eight years ago, your father didn't have to die."

"After they carried the old Don to the hospital, someone pulled a few strings and swapped out one of the drugs that would have saved him."

The words hit me like a current, and my whole body shook.

"Who was it?"

My father's death was a wound that never closed. Don Vincenzo Castellano, struck down in the years his enemies still spoke his name in low voices.

I dragged myself up to demand the answer, and in that instant Vittoria snatched the fruit knife off the side table and turned it on herself, sinking it into her own shoulder.

I froze, unable to understand why she would cut herself.

Her scream tore through the room, and Lorenzo burst in, the door slamming back against the wall.

Clutching the wound, Vittoria sobbed, "Elena, no, please!"

"Don't hurt me. I never meant to take Marco from you back then."

"Please, just forgive me!"

Blood ran down between her fingers, staining the new watch on her wrist red, a thing worth more than most men in this house would see in a lifetime. Her thumb worried at the inside of her other wrist, her grief holding a half-second too long.

Rage twisted Lorenzo's face a mottled purple, and he swung his hand and slapped me hard.

"Elena, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"Vittoria saw you weren't well and came to check on you out of kindness."

"And you pull a knife on her over something from years ago?"

The way Salvatore and Carmela looked at me changed too. Across the room, the old Don's cane stilled against the floor, and his wife's fingers found the worn rosary at her belt.

In their wildest dreams they'd never have imagined that I, always so gentle and good, could do something like this.

Vittoria put on her wounded act. "Lorenzo, don't blame Elena."

"If you have to blame someone, blame me. I shouldn't have called you, and I never should have taken that fall."

"It's my fault Elena had to walk all that way through the snow tonight."

"And eight years ago, yes, I'm the one who broke the betrothal that was hers."

"I'm guilty. I deserve this knife."

Lorenzo's eyes filled with tears for her. "No, Vittoria, you did nothing wrong."

"Marco fled the betrothal-pact because he never loved Elena."

"That had nothing to do with you!"

"And tonight, I went to get you because I wanted to."

"You can't be blamed for that either."

I didn't take in a word of it. My eyes burned red, fixed on Vittoria.

All I wanted now was the answer. Who had killed my father.

Safe under Lorenzo's protection, she shot me a taunting look.

I lunged for her like something gone mad, and Salvatore and Carmela held me back with everything they had.

Lorenzo had had enough. He called the soldiers and had me thrown straight out of the estate.

"Elena, if it weren't for the oath that bound us as man and wife, I'd have already handed you to the Feds!"

"Go home and cool off!"

"Do this again, and I'm severing the blood-pact between us!"

The moment the estate gates shut, something in me died to ash, and I turned and walked away without a second's hesitation. My father's signet ring pressed hard into my palm until the crest cut a mark there, the only inheritance they could not take.

My figure vanished completely into the dark of the storm.