Chapter 2

I never got to read his message.

Marco's name flashed across my screen before Dante's words could load. I answered, just to hear how scared he was.

"Have you lost your mind?!" he roared. "Fifty grand? Betting on yourself in front of the whole family? Do you know whose face you just slapped?"

I kept walking toward arrivals. "Funny. I thought you slapped mine first. You know. When you sold me."

"I did it for the family!" His voice went cold and superior. "You've been sipping espresso in Europe for a year while I kept the Valentis alive. Your father is dead, Sienna. You're not a princess anymore. You're a useless girl nobody wants, and I'm the only reason anyone still says your name."

"So you posted my funeral picture to humiliate me."

"It's not humiliation if it's true."

I stopped in the middle of the terminal.

After my father died, the family tore itself apart. Capos fought over his chair like dogs over a bone. Men who used to bring me cannoli on Sundays laughed at me in the hallways. Too fat. Too soft. Too stupid for business. I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating, then ate everything. The panic attacks came every night.

Marco found me during one of them. He sat outside my bedroom door until dawn and said, "Forget them. You're beautiful. I'll protect you."

I believed him. I gave him my father's gold signet ring so he could speak for me at the table. He asked to keep us a secret, so no one would say he climbed up through the Don's daughter. I agreed to that too.

On the flight home, I had imagined his face when he saw me. I imagined us finally going public.

He went public, all right. He just did it with my dignity.

"Here's how tomorrow works," Marco said, enjoying himself again. "The old marker ritual. You drink from Castellano's glass. You wear his jacket in front of every family, photo goes in The Line. Then he carries you across the Velvet Room floor. Fifteen full seconds. If he doesn't throw you out for wasting his time, call it mercy. Now apologize in the chat and cancel your bet."

"In your dreams."

I hung up and blocked him.

The chat was still on fire.

[Fifteen seconds?? Castellano is 6'4" but he's not a crane.]

[If the Don throws out his back, can the Valentis even afford the hospital bill?]

[Ricci's playing dirty. Handing Castellano garbage is basically an insult to the Commission.]

My phone rang again. Rosie, my best friend since kindergarten, glared at me on video, her eyes red and swollen.

"I saw the picture. I'm calling my brothers. We're going to put Marco Ricci in the East River in pieces."

"Don't." I slid into the back seat of the town car and looked at my reflection in the dark window. "That's too easy. He still thinks I'm the girl crying outside his door. Let him keep thinking it."

Rosie went quiet. "Sienna. What are you planning?"

"He wants to use me as a stepping stone?" I smiled. "Then I'll step on him. In front of every family in New York. Help me find a dress that ends careers."

She grinned like a shark. "I've been waiting three years to hear you say that."

I hung up and opened The Line again. They were still laughing at my weight.

Then a gold notice burned across the top of the screen.

The black icon. The man who ran the Commission. The man they called the Devil of Manhattan, because nobody who crossed him was ever seen again.

[Dante Castellano: She is not a marker.]

The chat stopped.

No one typed. No one reacted. For one full minute, two hundred hardened killers forgot how to breathe.

Then a private message slid onto my screen.

[Dante Castellano: If you don't want to come tomorrow, you don't have to. No man in this city will dare touch you.]