Chapter 2

The next morning I woke up and the other side of the bed had been cold for hours.

Numb, I opened Instagram. Cecilia had posted ten minutes earlier: Craving a sandwich, so Don Moretti drove twenty-five miles to get me one, then dropped me at the office on his way back.

I remembered all the nights I had stayed up until dawn handling Family business, then asked him to drop me at headquarters because he was going that way.

He always refused, flat and cold. He never rearranged anything for me.

Back then, I thought he was simply made that way, that he treated everyone with the same coldness. Now I understood. He had only ever refused to make room for me.

I drove myself to Moretti Family headquarters.

As I stepped into the elevator, I heard the people in front of me talking.

"Did you see Don Moretti just now? That was Cecilia Bellini getting out of his car, wasn't it? Everyone knows she's the one he's loved all these years."

"I heard the whole residence was custom-built for Cecilia. Even the dinnerware was made a size smaller so it would fit her hands. Grace has lived there all this time and probably still hasn't figured it out."

"A stand-in is a stand-in. The real one comes home, and the stand-in exits."

I listened to them laughing and said nothing.

When the doors opened, I walked out.

They saw me, and the conversation died mid-sentence. They lowered their heads, with no idea where to look.

I returned to my desk without a flicker of expression. I had just opened the classified project files when Lucy Carter, one of my people, knocked and came in.

"Donna, Don Moretti wants you in the top-floor study right now."

The top-floor study was where the Moretti Family handled its most sensitive business.

I pushed the door open. Besides Damian, the advisor and several of the territory bosses were seated inside, and off to one side sat Cecilia, looking soft and harmless.

Damian looked up. "The arms supply plan submitted yesterday had every quantity and model number wrong, causing losses when the factory began production. Explain."

My gaze went to Cecilia, and everything came clear at once.

I had checked that production plan three times before handing it to Cecilia to enter and file.

I kept my voice even. "I went over that plan three times. The error did not happen at my end."

Damian looked down at the report in his hand. "I know. Cece already came forward about the oversight. This is her first time handling Family business. If it leaves a mark on her record, how do you think the rest of the Family will see her?"

He lifted his eyes to me, his tone softening a fraction. "You're the Donna. No one is going to say anything about you. So we'll blame the failure on you publicly. Your team's entire annual bonus will go toward the Family's losses."

The cold went straight through me. So he had called me up here to take the fall for the woman he had never stopped loving.

"I don't accept that."

"It's already decided. I'm informing you, not asking you." Damian finished and walked out with the advisor and the territory bosses, leaving me alone with Cecilia.

The people who had built the Moretti Family alongside us were all bosses and captains now, each with territory and power of their own.

I alone had received nothing but the empty title of Donna and a body riddled with ailments. Everything else had been kept out of my hands.

The Family elders had proposed more than once that I be given control of the port. Damian refused every time.

"You're already the Donna. If I give you any more power, my men will accuse me of favoritism."

For the sake of Damian's standing, I did the work and swallowed the cost, year after year.

Cecilia's eyes gleamed with triumph. She threw it right at me. "Grace, I'll tell you the truth. I changed the quantities and model numbers on purpose. Damian and I grew up together. Every elder in this Family knows it. You're nothing but a piece he moved to keep the Family stable. You took the title that should have been mine. Did you really think you were the Donna?"

Rage came up through my chest and I was shaking with it. I could take any amount of humiliation and unfairness aimed at me. The one thing I could not take was it landing on the people around me.

Lucy's mother was terminally ill, and Lucy needed that bonus to pay for surgery.

For six months, I had traveled overseas for that project, reworked the proposal again and again, and finally closed the deal, all for the bonus that would come when production began.

Everyone's work, wrecked for her amusement.

I brought my hand up and slapped Cecilia across her perfectly made-up face. A bright red print rose on that pale skin, and Cecilia froze where she stood.

Damian heard the slap and came through the door. He crossed the room in long strides and pulled Cecilia behind him. His eyes held a panic and tenderness I had never seen before.

He turned on me, and his voice cracked out like a whip. "Grace. Apologize!"

"I don't want an apology." Cecilia sniffed, and her voice went small and injured. "I want it to be fair. She hit me, so I get to hit her back."