Chapter 2

Julian finished washing up and went back to the master bedroom.

The study door clicked shut again.

I pulled a palm-sized hard drive from the inside pocket of my coat.

Earlier, at the corner of the emergency stairwell, I'd spotted a small electrical room.

To erase any trace of my intrusion tonight, I'd yanked the hard drive out of it on my way back.

I plugged it into the study computer and typed in the decryption commands.

Turns out that recorder held five years of surveillance footage from the hidden room.

When the video finally loaded, I clicked on the file dated May 17, 2023.

That was the day I got ambushed at the Brooklyn docks by three SUVs full of Irish mobsters.

Two bullets tore through my lower right abdomen.

I lay on the operating table at the Cappello family clinic for four hours. Twenty-four stitches. And the only person from the whole family by my side was Julian.

The moment the stitching was done, my father-in-law Victor called.

He didn't ask how badly I was hurt. He asked whether the berths had been taken by the Irish.

When he got the answer that we'd held the docks, Victor hung up on the spot.

That night, Julian said there was a shootout downstairs and he was worried about me in the clinic, so he had to go handle it.

In the footage, the long table was set with Victor's vintage champagne.

Victor sat at the head. Elena was cozying up to Mia, celebrating her twentieth birthday.

And Julian, who'd just excused himself to leave, was standing behind Mia, arms wrapped around her.

His expression smug and careless, he personally clasped a four-hundred-twenty-thousand-dollar pink diamond necklace around Mia's neck in front of his parents.

Mia leaned into his arms, blushing and coy, sweet-talking Elena about how beautiful she looked.

Elena was beaming.

"Mia is such a sweet girl. So much more considerate than that sour-faced Helena."

"Julian, you should've swapped her out for someone warm a long time ago. Helena walks around with that stick up her ass, like she's actually the lady of the Cappello house."

Victor exhaled a slow ribbon of cigar smoke.

"Now that we've got the Brooklyn berths, we take the cash flow out of Helena's hands piece by piece."

"Starting next month, the clean dividends from the docks go straight to Mia."

Julian stroked Mia's blonde hair and let out a scoff at the table.

"Don't worry, Father. Helena never suspects a thing with me."

"She thinks I left to protect her. Right now she's probably lying in that clinic feeling all touched."

"The more bullets she takes, the more blood she bleeds, it's all just paving the road for me, the Cappello heir."

I dragged the timeline and pulled up every secret meeting from the past few years.

Every time I secured territory for the family, Victor and Elena would quietly strip another piece of my power.

And Julian would always stand there, smiling, nodding along, happily carving off everything I'd nearly died for and handing it to Mia.

To my in-laws, I was just the daughter-in-law who bled for them, a tool to be discarded the moment the job was done.

To my adopted sister, the love I'd given her like she was my own blood was nothing but a stepping stone to crawl into my husband's bed.

And the man I loved, my husband, he enjoyed everything I'd fought for, everything I'd bled for, then turned around and feasted on my bones with the rest of his family.

The charcoal in the fireplace burned to ash. My heart went cold with it.

I sat there staring for a while. Then I made up my mind.

I pulled open the bottom drawer, took out an unopened satellite phone, and punched in an encrypted number.

Two rings. The line connected.

"Helena. Finally. I was wondering when you'd call."

The voice on the other end was my father, head of the Moretti family in Sicily.

"Eight years ago, you finished building the Moretti underground network in North America."

"Your brother and I lost count of how many times we told you to come home to Sicily, take up the reins."

"You insisted on staying with that second-rate family, breaking your back for the Cappellos."

Back when the job was done, the family's private jet was sitting on the tarmac at JFK.

But I couldn't let go of Julian. And I couldn't let go of Mia, the girl I'd brought back from the slums and raised like my own sister.

I was scared that if I went home, all that warmth, that ordinary life I'd built, it would all disappear.

So to hold onto this family, I buried the truth: that I was the youngest daughter of the Moretti family.

For eight years, I worked without complaint. I expanded Cappello territory, took bullets, laundered dirty money, thinking my sacrifices, my patience, would eventually earn me something real.

Never once did it cross my mind that Julian was sleeping with Mia behind my back, and that my in-laws were quietly calculating how to cut me out for good.

"Father. I've made up my mind."

I stared out at the night through the window, the last trace of warmth in my eyes hardening to ice.

"Help me. I want to tear the Cappello family out by the roots."