Chapter 2

The next morning, the curtains of the estate were drawn open by a maid, but I had been awake for hours.

Last night's trending story was still snowballing. The footage of "The Don and Chiara's Late-Night Rendezvous" had been re-cut into dozens of versions, each headline more provocative than the last. The comment sections overflowed with malicious speculation from Sicilian family circles and outsiders alike.

They debated whether Marco's authority would take a hit. They debated whether I — the "Eastern European half-blood wife" — would lose my mind from the humiliation.

I set my phone back on the nightstand and went to the bathroom to tend to the cut the bank card had left the night before.

A thin line of dried blood, already scabbed over, sat in an ugly spot — like a mark of deliberate humiliation.

It didn't hurt, though.

What truly suffocated me was the knowledge that time was running out for my mother, and the price of that controlled medication climbed silently after every scandal — as if reminding me that as long as I kept breathing on Ferrante territory, I would always pay a steeper price.

I had barely finished wrapping the bandage when hurried footsteps sounded outside the door.

A maid stood in the doorway, looking as frantic as if she'd stumbled into a blizzard. "Ma'am, the Don requests your presence downstairs immediately. The family's PR team is already here."

"This early?" My voice was calm. "Is it about the trending story?"

She didn't dare respond — only nodded.

By the time I pulled on a coat and descended, the living room was packed: slick-suited consultants, the designated spokesperson, and several elders with close ties to the council.

Their gazes fell on me the way one might examine a flawed piece of china.

Marco stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows, his silhouette rigid, radiating undisguised irritation. He turned only when he heard my footsteps, and the bloodshot redness in his eyes made it clear he hadn't slept.

"Sit." He pointed at the sofa and addressed me in the tone one might use to discipline a subordinate. "We need to handle last night's story."

I sat down with composure, didn't spare the PR team so much as a glance, and fixed my gaze squarely on Marco. "How do you plan to handle it? Suppress the coverage, or come clean?"

His jawline tightened. He seemed to despise the detached calm I wore like armor.

"Come clean?" He let out a cold laugh. "You think I owe anyone an explanation?"

"Then why did you call me down here?" The question came out quiet, but it had teeth.

The room went silent. The consultants had clearly learned to hold their tongues whenever Marco lost his temper, so every eye converged on him, waiting for an actionable answer.

Marco walked up to me and looked down from above, his voice sinking low. "You're going to hold a press conference."

I blinked, as if he'd spoken in a foreign language.

"A press conference?" I repeated. "Me?"

"Yes." His tone left no room for debate. "You're going to clarify that last night's footage was fabricated — that you, out of jealousy toward Chiara, paid someone to splice and edit it."

I looked at him, and a faint smile escaped me — so thin it was almost mockery. "You want me to take the fall for you two?"

His gaze grew colder still, as though he had finally ripped away the paper-thin pretense of restraint. "You're my wife. If you don't shoulder this, who does? Besides, you've always been so good at throwing money at problems. This time, do it your way — clean up my mess."

I didn't argue. I knew perfectly well that Marco hadn't summoned me to discuss. He'd summoned me to inform.

I lifted my hand, palm up, the gesture as mild as if I were asking for a cup of tea.

"You just said her name," I reminded him. "One hundred thousand."

Someone in the room drew a sharp breath. Several elders' expressions soured with visible impatience, as if I were deliberately making a scene at the worst possible moment.

Marco stared at my outstretched hand, rage pooling inch by inch behind his eyes, but in the end he snatched up the checkbook, scrawled a figure, and flicked it onto my lap.

"There." His voice dripped with restrained contempt. "Keep up the greedy act. Make it convincing."

I tucked the check away, as composed as ever — as though this had been the natural order of things all along.

"I'll do the press conference," I said, lifting my eyes to meet his. My voice held no plea, only the clear-eyed sobriety of a woman naming her price. "But it'll cost you twenty million."

Marco's eyes narrowed, as if my audacity physically stung. "Have you lost your mind?"

"You said I'm good at throwing money at problems." My tone was steady. "So let's follow your logic. A crisis this size demands a price to match."

A frigid smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. He should have refused outright, but in the next second he did something that made my heart drop like a stone.

He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and tilted the screen toward me.

On it was a private medical facility room sealed off with metal paneling. Cold light poured from the ceiling like moonlight stripped of warmth. My mother Rosa lay on the hospital bed, her complexion so pale it was nearly translucent, the color drained from her lips as if every drop of blood had been siphoned away. The rhythm of the breathing machine came through the screen, rapid and labored.

My fingertips went cold. My breath caught as though something had clamped down on my throat.

Marco's voice, meanwhile, was unnervingly serene — serene to the point of cruelty. "Your mother's medication quota this week was authorized by my signature."

I looked up and found no guilt in his eyes — only a cold, calculating possessiveness, as if he had finally located the leash that would make me sit and heel.

"Sofia," he murmured my name in a low rumble that straddled the line between coaxing and threatening, "you can keep haggling with me over money. But don't forget — every condition you set rests on one premise: your mother is still breathing."

I couldn't speak. I only felt a blunt, crushing weight settle over my chest, pressing so hard I nearly doubled over.

A consultant cleared his throat and stepped in smoothly, offering me a dignified way out. "Ma'am, as long as you cooperate, we'll ensure the controversy blows over quickly. Your image and the Don's won't suffer any real damage."

"Image?" I echoed softly, as if tasting an absurd word.

My mother was lying in a hospital bed, waiting for medication to keep her alive, and they were talking about image.

Marco pocketed his phone, his tone sliding back into its lofty indifference. "Twenty million — fine. But you read our script, word for word."

I looked at him and felt the last vestige of a fantasy — that he might one day bend before me — quietly die.

He wasn't sorry. He had simply found a more civilized way to hold the blade against the softest part of me.

Slowly, I curled my fingers into my palm, letting the nails bite into flesh, forcing myself to stay lucid — refusing to let my composure shatter in front of these people.

"Fine," I said.

The moment the word left my lips, I heard one of the elders let out a satisfied grunt — the sound of a man pleased that a wild animal had finally been broken.

Marco, however, showed no sign of relief. As though worried I might back out at the last moment, he jerked his chin at the consultant behind him. "Give her the script. Arrange hair and makeup. Press conference at three."

As I rose to my feet, footsteps sounded from the staircase.

Luca had woken at some point and stood at the landing in pajamas that hung loose on his frame, his face still etched with last night's anger and defiance.

He looked at me, his expression tangled into something impossible to unravel.

"Mom," his voice came out stiff, though it seemed to tremble with some suppressed hurt, "are you about to do something embarrassing for money again?"

I stared at that face — so much like Marco's — and the dull ache in my chest deepened.

I wanted to tell him the truth: that I needed the money not out of greed but because his grandmother was inching toward death. I wanted to tell him that the Eastern European blood running through his veins was no disgrace — that the truly repulsive ones were those who measured a person's worth by their bloodline.

But I knew he wouldn't hear it. Not now.

Inside these walls, the only voices that reached him were Chiara's tenderness and Marco's authority.

So I simply said, in a voice as even as a statement of fact: "Luca, everything I do is so that we can leave this place."

He blinked, as if the word leave meant nothing to him.

Marco cut in, impatient. "Don't fill the boy's head with nonsense. Go get ready."

I turned and headed upstairs, the sound of their efficient arrangements trailing behind me like the opening act of a trial that had been scripted long in advance.

And I knew that what awaited me wasn't just the camera flashes and the humiliation on that stage.

It was the quieter, more confined dressing room backstage, where Chiara would hand me the knife herself.

Because she had never come to watch.

She had come to win.