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

That night was where our paths began to split.

Adriana's coquettish voice piped up again, sweet as poisoned wine.

"Fine, fine, I won't push. Then, Don Corsetti, at least tell us how Miss Bellandi did her little striptease. That's fair, isn't it?"

Lorenzo tapped her forehead lightly, the gesture of a man who owned everything he touched.

"Don't you already know all the details?"

Adriana swung on his arm, wheedling.

"I just want to hear it one more time. Come on, will you tell it or not?"

The other girls joined in, pouting and coaxing around the low table, their glasses catching the candlelight.

"Don Corsetti~ Just tell us! We all want to hear it~"

With a whole cluster of pretty young things fawning over him, Lorenzo put on a mock-stern face, the same face he wore when he wanted a room to believe he was being generous.

"Enough of this nonsense! It was just your Miss Bellandi mistaking me for the associate at the sit-down, stripping down to her underwear, scaring the poor man so badly he tried to get out of the car. She locked the doors and wouldn't let him leave. If I hadn't gotten there in time, an allied Don's dignity would've been gone right there in the back seat…"

As his voice rose and fell through the story, the jumbled memory I'd been forced to bury got mercilessly rewritten. I pressed two fingers flat against my stomach, against the old wound, the way I always did when a lie was being told in front of me.

No wonder he'd looked at me so strangely after I sobered up.

I'd asked him what was wrong, whether I'd made a fool of myself while drunk, and he'd said:

"Francesca, thank you for everything you've given me. I promise I'll never let you down. Once the operation is made, once we're recognized by the other families, I'll marry you."

After that, he rarely touched me. He poured more and more of himself into the Family instead, into building the operation out beyond the hotels and the docks.

And I sank deeper into the dream he'd built for me, taking every poisoned cup at every tribute sit-down, throwing myself even harder into making the operation bigger, stronger, harder to touch.

All so I could become his bride that much sooner.

But the operation was made, blessed at the grand feast in front of every Don who mattered, and he said not a single word about marriage.

Instead, to keep Adriana and the other girls entertained, he turned my most humiliating moment into a punchline.

Lorenzo gave the crowd another order, his tone doting, indulgent.

"That's enough now. Everyone treat this as a joke, and I don't want it leaving this room."

They all laughed and swore to it, the way you swear to anything a Don says when his hand is on his glass. But after I stepped into the powder room, a few of the girls came in after me, their heels clicking on the marble.

"Hey, what do you think Don Corsetti meant by all that tonight? Are we getting a new lady of the house or something?"

"Feels like he's putting the old workhorse out to pasture. Once a thing is spoken out loud, it stops being omertà. Miss Bellandi's probably not far from getting cut loose…"

"Then we'd better cozy up to Adriana. As crazy as Don Corsetti is about her, she'll be moving up fast. Adriana actually told me the Don had those allied men get Miss Bellandi drunk on purpose, so tonight's proposal would fall through because she was too wasted to stand…"

"It's almost funny. She bled for him at every sit-down, took every cup meant for his lips, and got nothing out of it. Talk about pathetic."

"You sure that proposal was even for Miss Bellandi? Look at her. She has no idea about any of it."

Their mockery drove into my heart like a dozen knives.

I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep the tears from spilling out.

Because just last night I'd asked Lorenzo if he had a surprise for me tonight, and he'd told me flat out that he didn't.

My phone buzzed against the cold marble. A message came in:

【Heard you're liquidating your entire stake in the Family. Would you transfer it to me? Name your price.】

I looked at the sender, genuinely surprised.

I never expected Dominic Falcone to want what was in my hands.

He was the allied Don I'd mistaken for Lorenzo that night, the one I'd stripped for.

I hesitated two seconds, then asked him:

【Why?】

【Call it a debt of honor. For taking advantage of you back then.】

【Come out and we'll talk it over on neutral ground. And I'll take you somewhere you can breathe. You look like you need to.】

I couldn't help freezing.

Dominic had been at the feast tonight too, seated among the made men. Could he have just overheard everything?

I asked him outright.

He only said:

【That night I should have stopped you from drinking so much. It was my fault, and a man settles his debts.】

So was that the reason his Family, with far better arrangements available to a Don of his standing, still chose to put its name beside mine on the blood oath?