Chapter 6

Everything around me felt as though it were separated by a thin, invisible film.

In the second year after the blood-alliance union that made me Salvatore Marchetti's wife in name, I took in a puppy.

If there was anything I absolutely had to carry out with me when I finally severed these ties, it was my dog.

I staggered down the corridor toward the room and pushed the door open, then froze.

Vittoria was inside, standing among my things as though the room already belonged to her, holding black cookies and stuffing them into my dog's mouth over and over again.

My heart pounded violently. I snatched the cookies from her hand and immediately caught the scent of chocolate.

"You fed it chocolate?" I screamed. "Don't you know dogs can't eat chocolate?!"

My shrill voice startled the puppy. It spun anxiously at my feet.

I scooped it up at once, meaning to rush it to the Family's clinic.

At that moment, Vittoria stepped in front of me, blocking the door the way a soldier blocks a threshold.

"I fed it on purpose," she said smugly. "Sister, this dog is such an eyesore. Just let it die here."

She spoke with the same malicious delight she'd had every time she pulled a cruel prank when we were children, back when the Lombardi name still meant something warm to me.

"Get out of my way, you monster!" I shoved her aside, my hands shaking uncontrollably.

The next second, the door burst open.

Salvatore and my two brothers filled the doorway. The air in the room seemed to drop a degree, the way it always did when made men crowded a space and every gaze turned to judgment.

"Serafina, you've laid hands on Vittoria again!" Matteo roared. "She even brought food for your dog to make peace with you!"

"I told you long ago she should be sent somewhere to clear her head," Gennaro snapped, the underboss's contempt heavy in his voice. "She's completely insane. We should just send her to the sanitarium!"

As he spoke, he seized my arm roughly.

Salvatore looked at me with icy indifference. I saw nothing in those eyes but hatred, the same flat, glacial hatred he showed men who owed him blood.

"She fed my dog chocolate!" My voice trembled violently. The suffocating pain rose from my chest to my throat, making it hard to breathe.

Seeing my pale face, Salvatore hesitated for a moment. He knew how much I loved my dog.

"Sister..." Vittoria began to cry again. Her hand pressed flat to her chest as if her heart were failing, though the fingers pressed a half-beat too early, before the tears could catch up. "I really didn't do it on purpose. I didn't know there was chocolate in the cookie."

"I can apologize," she said pitifully. "But I really don't want to kneel to a dog."

She was still pretending.

My vision darkened with rage. I wanted nothing more than to tear Vittoria apart. But just then, the puppy vomited a mouthful of blood.

The bright red stained my eyes.

Its weak whimper shattered my heart.

I could no longer care about anything else. I only wanted to get my dog to the clinic. But Salvatore caught my arm.

He looked at me coldly, as if I were a debt come to be settled.

"You should apologize to Vittoria."

My brothers closed ranks and blocked my path as well.

"She fed my dog chocolate!" I clenched my teeth, refusing to back down.

Matteo's expression darkened. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand, one by one, the sound too loud in the stillness.

"Serafina, it's just a dog. Vittoria already said she didn't know there was chocolate in the cookie. How could you make her kneel to a dog? She's sick. Don't you have any sympathy at all?"

"She took everything from me!" I screamed hoarsely. "Vittoria isn't sick at all. She's pretending—"

Before I could finish, Gennaro slapped me hard across the face.

He looked at me with pure disgust.

"Serafina, you've completely lost your mind. No one would joke about their own health. If you don't kneel down and apologize to Vittoria, I won't let you take this dog anywhere."

The pain on my cheek left me stunned.

Before I could react, several hands forced me down, trying to make me kneel. In this house men were pressed to their knees only before the Don or before a coffin, and now they meant to press me there before a lie.

I struggled desperately. Even if my ankle broke, I wanted to leave.

But the lost child and the two car accidents had already ruined my body.

As I looked at the puppy in my arms, its breathing growing weaker and weaker, my knees finally gave way.

I knelt.

"I'm sorry," I said calmly. "Is that enough?"

At the moment my knees hit the ground, something inside me died completely. The room went very still, the way a room goes still after an order no one can take back.

Satisfied expressions appeared on their faces.

Only then did they let me rush toward the clinic with the puppy in my arms.

But it was already too late.

The clinic doctor, a man the Family owned along with his silence, sighed and placed a small urn of ashes into my hands.

My body, and my heart, felt utterly hollow.

I accepted the ashes numbly, like an empty shell.

It had been a clumsy little stray, only three months old when I picked it up off the wet street. I raised it for five years, and all it ever learned was how to fetch slippers.

Back then, I thought that I would be able to stay with it for a very long time.