Chapter 2

The next day there was no wedding.

Dante announced publicly that I was unwell and the ceremony had been postponed.

He never asked whether I agreed.

At ten in the morning I walked into the Russo Family conference room. The lieutenants sat along both sides of the long table, and Vivian had taken my chair.

She was still wearing my mother's brooch.

Dante sat at the head of the table and raised his eyes to me.

"You should be resting upstairs. You aren't needed here."

For seven years every set of dock accounts had passed through my review. Under Marco the Russo smuggling routes had been a mess. I redrew the shipping schedules, talked three dockworkers unions around for Dante, and found customs middlemen willing to cooperate.

Now he was telling me I was not needed here.

"Why is Vivian here?"

Vivian stood up at once.

"I'm only looking into the Family's income for the charitable foundation. If you'd rather I didn't, I can step out."

She said it and did not move.

Everyone was waiting for Dante to speak.

Dante closed the file in front of him.

"Vivian needs to understand the Russo Family. Sit down, Lysa."

"That is my seat."

"A chair doesn't decide who you are."

I almost laughed.

If chairs did not matter, he would not be giving orders from the head of the table.

"Get her out," I said.

The room went dead quiet.

Dante looked at me for a few seconds, then ordered everyone else out. Vivian lowered her voice as she passed me.

"At least he never asked me to prove I was worth something."

When the door closed, Dante stood up.

"You made a joke of yourself in front of everyone yesterday."

"I'm not the one who made the joke."

"You are going to be Donna. You cannot lose control over one woman."

"A woman wearing my dead mother's brooch and sitting in my seat?"

"I gave her the brooch."

His frankness left me with nothing to say for a moment.

"Why?"

"Because I want you to understand that some things aren't as important as you think they are."

I looked at the man I had loved for ten years and realized, truly, for the first time, that he knew exactly how to hurt me.

Dante had not changed overnight.

He simply had enough power now to stop hiding what he thought.

"Give me back the brooch."

"When you've calmed down."

"It belongs to me."

"It sits in the Russo safe, which makes it Russo property."

I slapped him.

The sound was very clear in that room.

Dante's face turned with the blow, and for a long moment he did not move.

Then he caught my wrist, hard enough to hurt.

"I'll let that go once," he said, "but you need to learn to obey the Don's decisions."

"Do you want a wife or a subordinate?"

"A proper Donna knows when not to challenge her husband."

That evening Vivian leaked the reason for the postponement to the press.

The story said nothing about Dante's betrayal. It said only that jealousy had left me emotionally unfit to go through with the wedding.

Dante pulled strings to have the coverage killed, and then demanded that I apologize to Vivian.

I refused.

He did not lose his temper. He simply had a lawyer bring me a document.

It was the deed transfer for the safe house on the Brooklyn shore.

Back when Marco was hunting him, the two of us hid there for four months. We repaired every board in that house ourselves. He told me once that even if he lost every business he had, that place would always be our home.

The document listed the new owner as Vivian Hale.

The lawyer looked at me. "Mr. Russo says that once you learn to accept reality, he will stop disposing of the assets the two of you hold together."

I took the document.

I finally understood that this was not some passing appetite for something new.

He meant to take away the things I cared about one by one, until I bowed to him.