The Girl Without a Name Was the Name They All Feared

Right. Who ever respected a doormat trailing after someone?

But that wasn't me.

Lorenzo and I met at one of the Family's social clubs, the kind with a legitimate face and old blood in the back rooms.

I'd just come off a Muay Thai session, starving, so hollow my stomach was pressed against my spine, and I snuck a bite of my roommate's snacks.

She ribbed me for it, then told me to call her "Mommy" and let her hear it.

Just roommates messing around. I didn't mind, so I actually said it.

Lorenzo stepped in on my behalf right then. He said you couldn't bully someone just because they were poor, and then he told me I shouldn't steal other people's food either.

That was just him. The upstanding sort, always eager to set things right, honor stitched into him where other men our world raised carried only appetite.

After that I played poor, played pitiful, chased after him every single day, and before long we were together. Everyone knew Lorenzo was "keeping" me.

People kept saying he was keeping a gold-digger with cash and no bloodline. I was afraid it made him lose face, so I told him my Family was actually old blood. He didn't much care either way.

Four years together. No dramatic ups and downs, no sweeping love story, but the kind of love that was thick and sweet as honey.

We'd barely ever even fought.

So when he dumped me out of nowhere, I couldn't accept it. I just wanted to know why.

I looked at Lorenzo up on the dais where the alliance sit-down was set, and walked toward him, step by step. The men in dark suits along the walls tracked me, hands drifting near their jackets, but none of them moved.

But before I could get a word out, that woman was suddenly in front of me.

She was so short she had to tip her head back to look at me, and I had to look down to see her.

"The hell, you actually came up here?"

She sprang up and swung to slap me.

I stepped back out of reach, frowning, and looked at Lorenzo. "You broke it off with me to marry a thing like this?"

"What garbage are you spouting?"

Lorenzo strode forward and slapped me across the face. A glass was set down somewhere behind us, too deliberate in the sudden quiet.

When the woman hit me, I dodged.

But when Lorenzo hit me, I didn't move.

He'd been ill lately, and I was afraid he might lose his footing and fall.

He was about to marry someone else, and I was still worrying about him. How pathetic could I get?

I touched my struck cheek, grief already welling in my eyes.

"So you're Lorenzo's woman from before?"

The woman came over, gave a scornful little laugh, her rings catching the light as she flashed them at me. "A gold-digging bitch, and you've got the nerve to put on airs in front of me? Do you know who I am? I'm Bianca Ferraro. The Ferraros are the richest crew in Boston!"

I didn't look at Bianca. I kept talking to Lorenzo. "Walking away without a word. That isn't fair to me."

"Fair?"

"The estate, the car, the cash. I gave you all of it. What else do you want?"

"Stop this, Adriana. We're over."

Lorenzo said it with his brow knotted, his thumb pressing flat against his knuckles. "You know how it is. In a bloodline like mine, love and marriage stay separate. Thank you for the four years, but my wife can only be Bianca Ferraro. Understand?"

"I'm only asking you one thing. Do you love me?"

I looked at him and said it.

As for blood-alliance unions between old Families, I understood those. I'd been raised inside that silence, that code where a bride's feelings meant nothing at the table.

My own parents were an arranged match. They were just luckier. Childhood sweethearts who grew up together and fell in love as a matter of course.

As for me.

I was meant to marry for alliance too, though I didn't have to. The Valente seat on the Commission no longer needed a union to shore it up.

"Love?"

"Stop this, Adriana. From the time I was very small, I knew I'd have to marry for alliance one day. So I never believed in love at all."

"Being with you was simply because I thought you were pretty, and poor enough to be easy to control."

Lorenzo gave a mocking laugh. "That's enough. Now you have the answer you wanted, so go."

So the love thick and sweet as honey I thought we had was only ever what I thought.