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

That was what I thought, and what I asked.

The other end went quiet for a long time before a single line came through:

【Don't carry any guilt over this. Buying your stake out of the Corsetti operation won't cost me a thing.】

I stared at the word Corsetti, and my eyes stung for reasons I couldn't name.

The operation had first carried both our names, Lorenzo's and mine, when we swore it into being with our blood.

But before the Family was made, before the grand feast that would put us on the map, Lorenzo brought in some old woman who read omens the way the old country did. She said the sound of our names bound together carried a curse, a promise of ruin, so he had the whole operation rechristened.

Now every man on the street knew only the Corsetti name. The ones who remembered it had ever been ours, both of ours, were vanishingly few.

Corsetti. Adriana Corsetti. It sat on the tongue like it had always belonged there.

What was there left for me not to understand?

And I understood something more: whether it was the arrangement or the offer to buy the stake I meant to liquidate, Dominic was only doing it to make up for what they'd done to me that night.

But the man I'd bled for, the man I'd loved for years, had never once thought I shouldn't be draining those poisoned cups at every sit-down for him.

He'd taken my ruin with his own two hands and turned it into a party trick to keep other men happy.

【Fine. Wait for me.】

I slid the phone away, waited for the women to file out, and walked out of the restroom.

A hand caught my arm out of nowhere.

"Francesca, I've been looking all over for you. Where did you go? I still need you to take the cups for me tonight!"

I caught the faint scent of his cologne, expensive, familiar, and I didn't turn around.

"Something's come up. I'm leaving. Drink if you can hold it, and if you can't, don't."

He went still for a beat, then stepped around in front of me, his face darkening. Behind him a soldier by the door shifted his weight, watching us the way men watch a fuse.

"What's this about? You're sore I haven't made it official yet? We just haven't gotten to the main event. You think I'd go back on my word to you?"

So he still remembered the promise. The one where he'd swore he would put a ring on my hand the night the Family was finally made.

I had waited, at peace, all this time.

And what I'd waited for was the cruel truth.

He drew a velvet box from inside his jacket and gentled his voice.

"Once everyone's been seen to, then it's your moment. Aren't you happy?"

Inside the box sat the diamond I'd longed for.

But I smiled and pried his fingers open.

"I really do have somewhere to be. Go drink with them."

Lorenzo's brow knit. His hand went to the knot of his tie, and his eyes cut sideways, toward the private room where the others still sat, before they came back to me.

"No. What's gotten into you? You know I can't hold a drop, the stuff makes me sick. Come back in with me, Adriana and the rest are still waiting to raise a glass to you!"

His voice was so righteous it turned my stomach.

"Is that true? That you can't hold a drink?"

I looked at him steadily, waiting to see whether he'd tell the truth.

But there wasn't a flicker of guilt on his face. He only took my wrist and pulled me toward the private room without another word.

"You barely drank anything tonight. Why are you talking nonsense all of a sudden!"

I pressed two fingers flat against my stomach, against the old wound that always knew a lie before I did, then shoved him off hard and ran for the restroom, where I hugged the toilet and threw up until the world spun.

Lorenzo waited two impatient minutes. Then Adriana, who'd come looking for him, steered him back toward the room.

"Don Corsetti, go and rest. I'll see to Miss Bellandi."

And Lorenzo truly walked off without a backward glance.

Adriana carried over a glass of red wine and laid a hand on my back.

"Miss Bellandi, what do you push yourself so hard for? A woman with too much fight in her, no one ever loves her."

"Or is it the truth from earlier that you can't stomach?"

My head snapped around, and I looked at Adriana with bloodshot eyes.

"You did this on purpose?"

Adriana watched me, savoring it, and tipped the red wine straight down my front, her lip curling.

"What else? The Don's put up with you for a long time and couldn't bring himself to cut you loose, so someone had to play the villain. You don't know how every time he lies down beside you, all he sees is you stripping down for some associate at a sit-down. How sickening is that."

"And in the places he can't see, you've probably been passed around by half his associates, haven't you? Where do you find the nerve to keep clinging to him?"

Red wine dripped, soaking through the white of my gown.