He Let Me Drink His Poison, So I Sold His Empire to His Rival

Lorenzo Corsetti was allergic to drink. In the three years we'd spent building the operation together, blood and business fused into one, I sat through every tribute sit-down where the cups came laced, and I never once let a drop pass his lips. I took them for him. All of them.

At the grand feast celebrating the Corsetti Family's rise to a made operation, I stepped up again, taking on ten men at a time, draining every glass raised in his name so nothing that came to that table would reach him.

Halfway through the meal my stomach began to turn, the old wound waking, so I slipped away to take something to steady it.

Instead I found him slipping my medicine between his little courier's lips.

"Don Corsetti, if you give me your pill, what will Miss Bellandi do?"

"She was born to drink. She could down eight bottles of the strongest stuff and still stand. Worst case, she makes a fool of herself, that's all."

The girl covered her mouth and giggled. "What kind of fool?"

"Doing a full striptease in an associate's car... and the next morning she actually thought she'd done it with me..."

Every woman at the table burst out laughing.

Only I stood there as if nailed to the floor, going from numb, to a sharp sting, to something hollow where my heart used to be.

No wonder he'd always said the Family owed everything it had become to the way I'd given myself up for it.

The next second, he picked up the girl's glass and drained it in one swallow. His fingers found the knot of his tie, and his eyes flicked once toward Adriana Vitale, the way they always did before he decided anything.

Then he pinched her cheek. "Same rule as always. Don't tell Francesca Bellandi, or I'll have no one left to take my drinks for me."

So even the poisoner's weakness had been a lie.

I didn't expose him. I pressed two fingers flat against my stomach, against the old scar, and forced myself to turn away. With a single tap I sent the word that liquidated my entire stake in the Family, every share of everything we'd built.

From now on, I would never take another drink for him.

——

Behind me, the stunned laughter kept rolling on.

"Don Corsetti, so it's not that you can't drink, it's that you don't want to?"

Lorenzo made a shushing gesture, careless and easy.

"Francesca loves to drink, and she loves that feeling of the beauty rescuing the hero when she takes drinks for me. As her man, I have to indulge those little fancies of hers!"

His courier, Adriana Vitale, chimed in sweetly. Her hand drifted to her sleeve, smoothing away a wrinkle that wasn't there.

"Actually, the first time Don Corsetti had an 'allergic reaction,' it was because he'd eaten the mango cake I made. Miss Bellandi just assumed it was the drink."

The others gasped in admiration.

"Adriana, you're really something! You knew Don Corsetti that far back?"

Adriana laughed, all coy charm. "I was the only stray he ever took in off the street, brought under the Family's wing. Back then I had no way to repay him. The only thing I could offer was a cake I'd made with my own hands. Who knew it would cause such a huge mix-up!"

"Still, it's a beautiful misunderstanding. Now Don Corsetti never has to drink at a single sit-down for the rest of his life. Even if he struck me or cursed at me for it, I'd take it!"

Lorenzo shot her a mock-scolding look. "As if I'd ever raise a hand to you or curse at you. I coddle you every single day, and you still have the nerve to go blabbing our little secret!"

The doting in his voice came through crystal clear, even from the other side of the door.

A cold shudder shot up from the base of my spine to the crown of my head.

The grief and rage of being deceived were swallowed whole by that cold.

That night had been the first time for Lorenzo and me.

Candlelight, red wine, a rose-topped cake. Everything had been so perfect.

The only flaw was that Lorenzo suddenly flushed red all over, his throat swelling shut.

I panicked out of my mind, sobbing, ready to send for a doctor, but he stopped me and said a pill would fix it.

Afterward, I asked him how he could have had a reaction out of nowhere.

He told me it was the drink. That his body couldn't take liquor.

It was never a misunderstanding at all. It was his way of covering for Adriana.

Because the wine was something I'd bought. The cake was something Adriana had made.

That night, drowning in guilt, I did everything I could to please him, and for the three years that followed I took countless poisoned cups for him at every table where the Family sat down.

Three times I woke in a hospital bed with my stomach torn open, and more drunken nights of pain than I could count, and he'd tell me over and over, eyes red, that he loved me, yet he never once told me the truth about that lie.

And he certainly never told me he'd once taken a girl in off the street.

How laughable that I'd treated that night as our most precious memory.

That I'd treated all those days of taking drinks for him as the foundation stones of the future we were building together, bloodline and business, side by side.

It never once crossed my mind that it had only ever been my own one-sided fantasy.