Chapter 3

Beth's eyes were bloodshot, and her veil had gone crooked in her rush to get there.

She walked into the council room with tears streaming down her face.

"We've fought so hard to get here. If the Donna's say-so can wipe out all those years of work, I'd rather die right here!"

Beth was sobbing so hard she couldn't speak. Her knees buckled, and she nearly collapsed.

The sight only made the members angrier.

"Beth has waited all these years. She and Colton have been engaged forever. They were only waiting for him to join the inner circle before they got married."

"If the Donna weren't so determined to stop him, they never would have been driven this far!"

"Right. After everything they've been through to get here... It's just sad."

I was in the security room, watching the camera feed.

I watched the crowd grow angrier. Colton stood at the center of it all, looking like the most honorable man alive as he fanned the flames. Beth played the helpless victim to win their sympathy.

I felt nothing.

Beth hadn't changed. She still loved playing the helpless victim, as though no one else in the world had ever been treated so unfairly.

Just then, someone knocked on the security room door.

I turned around. A guard relayed a message. "Donna, Beth's mother, Evelyn Greco, is at the door. She wants to see you."

I turned away from the door and lit a cigar.

The moment she walked in, she said in a shaky voice, "Donna, please stop going after Colton."

I hadn't heard her voice in more than ten years. It had changed.

Her voice no longer had the softness that used to lull me to sleep. Gone too were the warmth and patience she'd shown when teaching me to read.

She had once stood in line for three hours to buy me a cake.

But she was also the woman who had moved Beth into my room just three days after I disappeared.

I drew a steadying breath before answering, "He's rotten. I'm not going after him. I'm getting rid of a threat to the family."

My mother protested, "He's not like that!

"I watched him grow up. I know him.

"Years ago, my daughter Alice fell into the sea. We never found her, dead or alive. He was so wracked with guilt that he wanted to throw himself into the water too.

"All these years, even after he got engaged to Beth, he's visited Alice's memorial every single year. How can you say a kind man like him has no morals?"

I laughed, a cold, humorless sound, half hidden in the cigar smoke.

My birthday party that year had been on a yacht. I had bodyguards with me, and the railing was taller than I was.

So how could I possibly have slipped and fallen overboard?

My parents never looked into it. They didn't even send divers to search for a body.

The whole matter was quietly buried, just like that.

"If I say something's wrong with him, I have a reason," I said softly. "Why else would I go after him? You tell me."

My mother didn't know what to say.

"That's impossible." When she finally spoke, her voice was strained.

"Then wait for the investigator's report, and tell me that again."

I stubbed out my cigar and signaled the guard to show her out.

She wanted to say more, but the guard was already holding the door open.

With no choice but to leave, she stopped at the door and threw one last remark over her shoulder. "Fine. Then we'll see whether you're the one who's wrong or Colton really is as corrupt as you claim.

"The truth will come out!"

She huffed and left.

Only after she left did I turn and stare at the closed door.

My heart sank.

After my mother's visit, the crowd in the council room grew larger by the day.

It wasn't just Miami anymore. Guys from the family's other operations were showing up too.

The uproar had spread so widely that everyone feared being the next person denied a promotion.

Some people even started demanding that I be stripped of my say in family decisions.

They banded together and emailed Lorenzo a formal complaint.

But I'd always managed Lorenzo's email, so I was the first to read it.