They Betrayed the Mafia Heiress, Then Lost Everything

"We can keep you under our protection, but four years isn't enough. A thing like this takes a lifetime!" A few young women passing the social club glanced at me with envy in their eyes. There was no ripple in my heart. In my last life, the four of us answered to the same house. To earn my place at the table, I worked harder than any soldier under the Lombardi banner, took every job, sat at every meeting. And in the end, my share of the take and my made position were quietly handed off, traded away for Bianca. There was word on the street, too, that I'd earned my standing on my back, that I'd given myself to the men above me to climb. For four whole years I was frozen out, cut from every room, made to eat alone. Back then, both of them swore they would stand at my shoulder and keep me safe. I didn't learn until I was dead that they were the ones who set the whole thing in motion. Through countless nights of turning over in the dark, I cried until the windows went grey. They used my suffering to put a smile on their beloved Bianca's face. Seeing that I had gone quiet, Bianca spoke up, the sweetness in her voice gone thin and sour. "Adriana has all the luck. Born to a name everyone still bows to, born beautiful, with two men who'd burn the city down for her. I never got a life like that. If Adriana hadn't taken me in, I'd have nothing, no roof, no name, nothing." The words landed exactly where she'd aimed them. The two of them ached for her at once. "Bianca, don't talk like that. You're beautiful. You're worth more than this. There's a future waiting for you, a bright one. When the time comes I'll have my father put you over one of our front operations, a clean office, your own people under you." "No, Bianca, come to me instead. I'll give you a higher place, a better cut. Whatever you want, it's yours." The two of them went back and forth over her like dogs over a bone. I couldn't help but feeling sad. After all the years we'd known each other, neither of them had ever made me a promise like that, never put me first the way they were putting her first now. It was true, then. Affection you put on for show could never stand against the kind that runs in the blood. When I turned to go, Lorenzo caught the change in me. He took my hand, guilt sitting heavy behind his smile. "Adriana, don't read into it. We're good to Bianca because she's your friend. That's all." Salvatore ruffled my hair like I was a child. "Don't think so hard about it. The hard part's over, you've passed. Come out for a drive with us. We put something together for you." I nodded and didn't argue. I was leaving this place soon anyway. I wanted one last look at the city where we'd grown up together. When we reached the garage, Lorenzo and Salvatore both rushed to put Bianca in the passenger seat. Bianca looked at me, the picture of reluctance. "Isn't that seat only ever Adriana's? If I sit there, she'll be upset." Lorenzo pressed her down into the seat before she could finish. "She doesn't deserve it. She won't mind. She's got the best temper of anyone." Salvatore shot him a hard look, the irritation plain on his face, and slammed the car door. It wasn't until the engine turned over that the two of them realized I hadn't gotten in. The windows came down. They looked at each other, fumbling for an explanation, and finding none that would hold. So I said it for them. "It's fine. I'll take my own car." Hearing that, they both let out a breath of relief, though something in how easily I'd said it caught them off guard. "Adriana." Lorenzo started to call after me. I rolled the window up before he could finish, unwilling to sit through another one of their lies. But the streets we passed still pulled the old memories loose, one after another. The three of us had grown up side by side, the way children of allied houses do, promised to one another before any of us could choose. From the time we were small, both of them chased after me, both of them swore they wanted me. Then my parents were taken in an accident, and the whole great Genovese name came down to just my grandmother and me, the two of us holding the line alone.

An old woman and a young girl, propping up a fallen house in a room full of jackals. So I learned fast, wanting to shoulder the family's debts and its name as soon as I could. Bianca had come from nothing too, taken in by no one, respected by no one in the circles we moved through. When I learned she was an orphan like me, I felt pity for her and went out of my way to bring her close, bankrolling her place at the table, telling her we'd claw our way through the hard years together. I never imagined she'd treat my kindness as a handout to be resented. She envied everything I had. She used every trick she knew to turn the heads of the two heirs I'd been promised to, and together the three of them buried my life. While I was lost in it, the car reached the place they'd brought me. What had happened in the garage still sat uneasy on the two of them. Both came around to open my door and lift my bag, eager to smooth it over. Lorenzo said, bright with excitement, "Adriana, look. This is the park we ran wild in as kids. Salvatore and I bought the whole stretch of it together. This is going to be our private ground from now on. Nobody comes here but us." Salvatore nodded. "I had men plant your favorite tulips through the whole field. By this time next year there'll be nothing here but a sea of them." "Then the four of us can ride out here, smell the flowers," Lorenzo went on. Their faces were full of longing for some future they'd already painted. I stared at the land a long time and said nothing. It was true, this had been the three of us once, the ground that held our easy years. But I had never liked tulips. I was allergic to every kind of pollen there was. While I was still thinking, fireworks broke open above my head, great bursts of them. The brilliant colors spelled out my name across the dark. In the middle of that dream of a scene, Lorenzo drew out a ring and held it toward me. "Adriana, this is the Valente signet, the union ring. My parents told me to put it on the hand of the woman who'd one day stand at the head of the family. I've wanted to give it to you for years. I only got the chance tonight." Salvatore cut in, irritated. "Adriana, will you have me instead? Have you forgotten the day you went under the water as a child, that I went in after you and nearly didn't come back? I'd put my life in your hands. A ring is nothing next to that." In my last life I was taken in by the depth of feeling between these two. Back then I believed, like a fool, that betrothal by blood meant a clean ending was waiting for us. That Grandmother and the Genovese name could lean on them and stand. I didn't learn the truth until the day I died. That devotion, too, could be performed. Just as I opened my mouth to refuse them both, Bianca spoke up out of nowhere. "Adriana, why did you tell everyone I'd been spreading filth about you, staining your name on the street? Now the whole circle is turning on me." She held her phone up in front of me. Beneath the syndicate's own boards, hundreds of comments. That I had no shame. That I'd slept my way into a made position. The few voices that had spoken for me were twisted, in Bianca's telling, into proof I'd been hounding her all along. Salvatore snatched the phone from her hand, his right hand already curling into a fist, the knuckles going white. "Adriana, how could you do something like this? It's bad enough you can't keep yourself in line, but why drag Bianca down with you?" Lorenzo, the cooler of the two, didn't catch fire the same way. But he looked at me with a question already settled behind his eyes. I pressed my surging emotions down. "I didn't. If you don't believe me, look into it yourself." Neither of them was listening. They were too busy soothing her. "Don't be afraid, Bianca. I'll have it scrubbed off the boards tonight, I'll make a call." "A little something sweet will help. Let me take you out, get you chocolate cake." The two of them held her up between them, one on either side. Not one of them looked back at me. Bianca's eyes flicked down, her lower lip trembling right on cue, and for a single unguarded instant, before the mask slid home, I saw the calculation flash clean across her face. I took a deep breath and looked, without feeling, at the ash drifting down where the fireworks had been. Held up against death, a grievance like this was nothing at all.

At least I was still breathing, and I had a new life ahead of me, a future no one had stolen yet. I wanted to take my own car back to the estate, but Salvatore was the one carrying my bag. So I had no choice but to trail behind the three of them through the dark. As we passed a hedge, Salvatore's voice cut through the night, impatient and low. "Bianca, how much longer do we have to keep up this act? I can't stomach it anymore. Adriana's running wild now. Who knows what she's caught crawling into beds she shouldn't." "She can't even tell a real heirloom from a fake. No wonder some old man talked her onto her back with a few pretty words. A woman like that, sitting at the head of the Valente table? The real family ring is only ever going on your finger, Bianca." Bianca looked between the two of them, eyes glistening, the picture of a wounded saint. "Adriana's done terrible things, it's true. But she was good to me once. How can I just turn my back on her? If you won't do as I ask, I'll never speak to either of you again." Her gaze flicked downward, her lower lip trembling right on cue, though the tears never quite climbed into her eyes. At that, the two heirs of the richest houses in the territory fell over themselves apologizing, frightened as soldiers caught skimming the take. They wanted nothing more than to grind me into the dirt and lift her to the heavens. More than ten years of knowing each other, worth less than a handful of Bianca's words. I held back my tears and turned away. In the endless night, I walked toward home with exhaustion dragging at every step. When I reached the estate, my sprained ankle had swollen so badly it was unbearable to look at. Donna Genovese fretted over it, bringing out the old medicinal wine to rub into the skin, her hands working the way they had when I was small. I didn't want her worrying more than she already did, so I told her instead about the offer. About the Family that had taken an interest in me. About the place I'd been given. She was startled, then radiant. "My Adriana, you'll make something of this name yet. I'm old now. You're the only one left who can hold the Genovese house together." I nodded, tears standing in my eyes. "After all these years, the Genovese name has cause to celebrate again. I'll throw a proper feast for you. We'll sit you before every Family in the territory." Her smiling face was exactly the one she'd worn when she sent me off to be married in my last life. Back then she thought I'd found a good man, and her joy had been complete. But the shock of Lorenzo abandoning the union at the altar had broken her, and she'd died there at the wedding, with everyone watching. Now that I had a second life, I would never let either of us walk that road again. She was old. I took the whole burden of the feast onto myself. When word reached them, the two I'd grown up beside came of their own accord to help. They even brought the chocolate cake I'd loved as a child, an offering of appeasement laid at my feet. "Adriana, you haven't answered a single message in days. Are you still angry about that night?" "We never meant to side against you. We only worried you'd pick up bad habits. For men in our position, respect among the Families is everything." I didn't forgive them. I simply let them stay and work. They owed me too much from a life they didn't remember. There was no balancing that ledger. All I wanted was to never lay eyes on either of them again after this was done. After my parents were buried, the Genovese house had fallen from its place at the table, and no one came calling anymore. Now that I'd risen, it was the same as announcing to every Family that the Genovese line had an heir, that we were no longer a name to be stepped on at will. So Donna Genovese set great weight on this feast and would not allow the smallest detail to go careless. She pressed her worn rosary between her palms more than once those days, her hands going still while everything around her rushed. On the night of the feast, the powerful and the connected filled the hall, made men and their wives, capos from the old houses, all gathered under one roof. Bianca entered too, in a gown far above her station, trailing in the wake of my two childhood companions. Her eyes moved over the glittering hall, over the chandeliers and the wine that cost more than her name was worth, and the jealousy in them was a living thing. "Adriana has all the luck in the world." "But what good is being born to a noble house, with all your cleverness? I still have a way to make you wish you'd never drawn breath." The words had barely left her mouth when the great screen at the head of the hall lit up. My face filled it. Image after image. All of them showed me naked in bed, tangled with one man after another. The room went still. A glass somewhere was set down too carefully. I couldn't breathe. "Isn't that the firstborn of the Genovese house? She does run wild. That's what comes of a child raised with no parents to teach her." "No wonder word on the street says she earned her place on her back. Seems it's all true."

"The Genovese house is truly finished. They let their firstborn become some capo's whore and a plaything for the Families." I had stood inside this kind of ridicule twice before, in the life that came before this one. Once was my wedding. Lorenzo had walked away from the blood-bound union in front of every house in the territory, all for Bianca, and the shame of it put my grandmother in her grave. It made me and the Genovese name a joke whispered across every social club in the city. The other time was my funeral. Before my body was cold in the ground, Salvatore couldn't wait to offer Bianca a union of his own, right there among the mourners. It made my whole life a punchline. Remembering that other life, I turned in a panic to look at my grandmother. She was breathing too fast, her eyes gone red as they fixed on the photo thrown up across the wall of the feast hall. "My Adriana, she would never do such a thing!" Seeing the state of her, my heart skipped a beat, and I begged the men around me to help me get her to a safehouse, somewhere our people could see to her. But they all stepped back, every one of them, afraid that standing near a dirtied woman like me might stain their own names. In the end it was the two of them who came forward out of the crowd. Lorenzo took the wheel himself, and Salvatore and I held my grandmother upright between us and ran her to the Family's guarded infirmary. "You brought her in time. Any later and I don't think we'd have kept her breathing," the doctor said. I thanked him quickly. Then I stayed at the foot of my grandmother's bed and went back through the feast hall's cameras. There she was, exactly as I knew she'd be. Bianca, in the footage, swapping the images out herself. Those photos, every last one, were fake. Stitched together. Insurance built out of nothing. I took the wire to call it in, to drag the proof to the only people who could end her. But the two of them stopped me. "It was only a joke. Do you have to make a sit-down out of it? You understand you'll destroy Bianca, doing this?" I went still, and then it came out of me as a roar. "And me? My grandmother nearly died. She wasn't afraid of destroying me, of burying the entire Genovese name?" Salvatore shoved Bianca behind him and pushed me back hard. His right hand had curled slowly into a fist, the knuckles gone white. "Are you finished, Adriana? Your grandmother's still alive and breathing, isn't she? Besides, flies don't land on a clean egg. You must have done something shameful first, or word like this wouldn't be on the street about you." The words couldn't reach my heart anymore. I shoved the two of them away, numb. Lorenzo caught my wrist, his expression turning to something secretive. "Adriana, don't make a fool of yourself. You know the weight the Valente and Mondello houses carry between them. No man in this territory would dare take your side at any table." Seeing that I still wouldn't let it go, his grip began to tighten. He laughed, a half-beat too late, his thumb dragging hard across his knuckles, the smile staying on long after the warmth had left his eyes. "Don't forget. Your grandmother is still lying in that bed. One word from me and the doctor walks away. I'll count to three. If you don't hand me the wire, I'll have someone pull the machine that's keeping her breathing." He counted in front of me, slow and even. "Three." "Two." "I was wrong!" I dropped to my knees, the tears coming down my face. I didn't dare. I didn't dare gamble my grandmother's life. Salvatore snatched the phone from my hand and crushed it underfoot. The falling fragments scratched across my skin. He looked down at me, cold. "As long as we're standing here, you will never touch Bianca again." I stayed collapsed on the floor until the two of them had gone, and only then did the pain spread through my chest. Two lifetimes of swallowed grievance finally broke loose, and I wept until there was nothing left in me. The promises sworn in our youth were fake. The bond we were raised inside was fake. Only the wound was real. I don't know how long it was before I made my way back to the infirmary like something dead. I was afraid Lorenzo and Salvatore might come back and do something, so I stayed at my grandmother's side for days. In all that time, only Bianca kept her messages coming. The two of them had taken her traveling, she said. Bungee jumping. Every single thing she and I had once promised each other and never managed to do. I blocked her number. I lifted my head and saw two men standing at the foot of my grandmother's bed. They greeted me, smiling, with the easy confidence of men who answered to something far larger than this city. "Adriana, we're under-doctors sent down by the Syndicate. Rest easy. While you're away, your grandmother's safety is the Family's word, and the Family keeps its word." The shock of it told me it was time. I returned to the Genovese estate and threw out every last thing tied to those two. Then I boarded the plane without once looking back. Lorenzo and Salvatore were never going to hold me up. I would rely on no one but myself to earn a future worth something, for my grandmother and for the Genovese name.