Chapter 3

The warehouse on Pier 17 smelled of salt, rust, and expensive perfume—a fitting cocktail for the business at hand. They called it ‘the Gilded Cage’, a traveling, clandestine auction house for things that couldn’t see daylight: blood diamonds, stolen art, encrypted ledgers containing rivals’ secrets.

The air was cold enough to see your breath, yet the women glittered in gowns worth more than the cars idling outside. I stood near a corroded steel pillar, a glass of champagne I wouldn’t drink held like a prop in my hand, watching the spectacle.

Isabella, of course, was a vision in silver silk that clung to her like moonlight on water. She played her part perfectly—the wide-eyed, fragile mafia princess fascinated by the dangerous baubles.

The auctioneer held up a velvet case. Inside, nestled on black silk, was a parure of Kashmir sapphires—a necklace, earrings, a bracelet. The stones were the color of a deep, cold twilight, flawless. The kind of blue a woman could drown in.

Isabella’s breath caught, audibly. She leaned forward, a hand drifting to her throat.

A fire, petty and self-destructive, ignited in my chest. Before I could think, my gloved hand lifted, the numbered paddle a stark white in the gloom. “Fifty thousand.”

Heads turned. A murmur rippled through the crowd. Bidding against your own sister? How deliciously tense.

Isabella’s eyes met mine, a flicker of surprise, then wounded confusion. She bit her lip, a picture of thwarted desire. Her admirer, a brutish captain from the Genovese crew, immediately raised the bid. “Seventy-five!”

“One hundred,” I said, my voice cutting through the murmur. It wasn’t about the stones. It was about the space I occupied in this room, in this family. It was about proving I could still take something, anything, for myself.

The Genovese man scowled, but before he could speak, a new voice cut in, amplified and electronically disguised, echoing from the shadowed balcony that overlooked the warehouse floor. It was a voice stripped of identity, yet its timbre resonated in my bones, cold and absolute.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

The crowd gasped. A jump like that wasn’t just a bid; it was a statement. It was a dismissal.

I knew who stood in those shadows. Nicholas. Playing his role as the mysterious benefactor, ‘Mr. Rossi.’

My knuckles whitened around the paddle. I forced my chin up. “Three hundred.”

The disguised voice didn’t hesitate. “Five hundred.”

Silence, thick and smothering, fell. The auctioneer’s gavel hovered. I was frozen. The sum was reckless, even for Castellano funds, and my father would skin me alive. More importantly, I saw the look on Isabella’s face—a blend of awe and triumphant vindication. She turned her face upwards toward the balcony, a saint gazing at a miracle.

I lowered my paddle. The gavel fell. “Sold to Mr. Rossi, for the lady in silver!”

It didn’t end there. It became a grotesque coronation. A Boucher painting Isabella sighed over? His voice claimed it. A set of pre-Columbian gold figuratives she admired from afar? His. A vintage Alfa Romeo sports car on display? His. He lit up the entire grim sky of that warehouse for her, spending fortunes on every trinket that caught her eye, a public, breathtaking declaration of infinite reach and devotion.

The final humiliation came when the auctioneer announced a rare, ten-carat black diamond. Isabella merely glanced at it, a curious tilt of her head.

“One million,” the voice from the balcony declared, preempting all bids.

A collective, sharp intake of breath. For a glance.

I couldn’t look away from the balcony. As the lots were finalized, a service door up there opened, spilling a slice of yellow light. For a second, I saw him. Nicholas, no longer a shadow, but in a crisp black suit, leaning over the railing. His gaze wasn’t on the stage or the diamond. It was fixed on Isabella.

A glacier of hollowing ache spread through my chest. I was a ghost at my own funeral, watching him shower another woman with a king’s ransom.

He had never been mine. And tonight, in front of everyone who mattered in our world, he made sure I knew it.