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

I looked down at the wine bleeding across my chest, dark as old blood on silk, and laughed out loud.

"Three years at the sit-downs, taking every cup that should have finished you, and all you ever did was carry the garbage out for me. Take the trash. He's yours."

"You're calling the Don garbage? You think you've earned the right?"

Adriana smiled and lifted her hand.

I threw my arm up to block the blow, but she only smiled wider and slapped herself. Twice. Hard.

She showed her own face no mercy. Her cheek swelled red in an instant.

"Ah! Francesca! Why did you hit me?"

She shrieked it loud enough to carry down the corridor, ripped open her own collar, and screamed for someone to help her.

When Lorenzo came through the door, he caught her at the precise moment she looked her most broken.

He didn't care that it was the women's washroom. He crossed the tile in three strides and pulled Adriana into his arms.

He stripped off his jacket and settled it over her shoulders, gentling her like something wounded.

"I'm here. Don't be afraid."

Then he turned to me, and the warmth went out of him like a door closing.

"Francesca! You're drunk!"

"Apologize to Adriana!"

He didn't ask a single question. In a world built on who you trust, he had already chosen. He believed her without condition.

I shook my head and refused.

"I didn't touch her. She threw the wine on me, then staged all of this—"

Adriana wept harder, right on cue.

"Don Corsetti, don't blame Francesca. It's my fault. I saw her reaching for another glass right after she'd been sick, so I told her to go easy. I knocked the wine from her hand so she couldn't drink. I deserved to be hit."

At that, Lorenzo struck me across the face.

The sound of it cracked flat in the tiled room. Somewhere out in the corridor a glass was set down too carefully, and the murmuring stopped.

"Francesca. Are you sober now?"

He pointed at Adriana's swelling cheek, his voice gone cold and level.

"Look at what you've done. If you can't hold your liquor, then you don't sit at the table. And now here you are, drunk, out of control, shaming yourself in front of the whole Family."

"Do you have any idea what you become with a few cups in you? The last sit-down, you mistook one of the associates for me and put on a show in the back of the car. I let it go. I didn't want you disgraced in front of them. And now you've raised your hand to Adriana and you still won't own it."

"Did you take one of the associates to bed and get caught, and now you'll hide behind the wine for that too? Do you think every man in this life is me? That they'll swallow whatever you hand them, no matter what it costs?"

Had I truly been drunk, I would probably have parroted every word back to him and gone down on my knees to Adriana.

But I had never been more clear-headed in my life.

Clear-headed enough to see exactly what I was worth in his eyes.

Three years of taking the poisoned cups meant for him, my ruined stomach, all of it, reduced to nonsense.

It was too absurd.

The noise had carried far enough to draw a crowd to the doorway. Made men, their wives, associates, the whole glittering feast of the Corsetti operation come to watch.

Word passed from mouth to mouth, and within a breath every one of them believed the deals I'd closed for this Family had been closed on my back.

They pointed. They whispered behind ringed fingers.

"Dio, a woman like that thinks she'll stand beside the Don? How could she ever deserve him?"

Someone else added, thick with sarcasm.

"She's had plenty of men. Clearly she's got her own particular talents."

"What talents? I wouldn't mind a taste myself. Is that all it takes to close a deal with her?"

Some drunk near the bar whistled at me through his teeth.

The anger on Lorenzo's face vanished the instant that whistle landed. Not a flicker of it left.

"Francesca! Apologize to Adriana! Or the surprise I had planned for tonight is finished!"

He was using the ring, the thing he'd promised me, as a blade to my throat.

I didn't care anymore.

"Lorenzo. We're done."

His face froze, disbelief carved into it.

"You strike someone, and now you throw a fit and demand we're finished?"

"You're drunk out of your mind. Since you love your wine and your scenes so much, tonight I'll let you have your fill. Let everyone here see exactly what you turn into."

He dragged me into the private room and forced the liquor down my throat in front of a table full of young women in borrowed silk.

However I struggled, his hand wouldn't ease.

One of the girls couldn't stomach it and spoke up.

"Don Corsetti, if something happens to Francesca from being made to drink like this, it falls on you. You'll answer for it."

But Lorenzo turned on her with a look that shut her mouth.

"Don't concern yourself. She's mine. Whatever happens to her, I'll answer for it."