Todos los capítulos de Nine Years of Silence: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 9

My mother's nails dug into my wrist. "Your sister pushed you out of the way in that warehouse explosion and scarred her leg for life," she hissed. "Now she wants Matteo, so you step aside. Consider it paying her back."Thunderous applause filled the hall, and the band struck up a celebratory melody. Matteo stood in the spotlight holding Cecilia's hand, the Silver Fox and the Black Serpent projected on the wall behind them. It looked like a union that already had everyone's blessing.The people at my table gazed at my sister with envy. Occasionally someone's eyes drifted to me, then quickly looked away. To them, I was just an ordinary advisor who handled contracts and accounts for the DeLuca Family, not even important enough to sit at the inner circle's table.Nine years.Nine years of youth, loyalty, and blood, and in their eyes, I wasn't even worth an explanation.After the banquet ended, I slipped into the empty back stairwell. No cameras, no Family attendants, just the muffled bass

That afternoon, I started sorting through everything Matteo had given me over the years.The wooden brooch he'd claimed to have carved himself still had a factory batch number on the back. The vintage silver bracelet he'd said he'd picked out especially for me was available for less than twenty dollars at any flea market. The photo album he'd said took him three months to put together still had the print shop's sample watermark on two of the pages.All those years of his "thoughtfulness," and he hadn't even bothered to fake it properly.I stuffed everything into black garbage bags and tossed them into the dumpster downstairs.That evening, my mother called and told me to come to the Costa estate.When I walked in, my father was by the fireplace, smoking. My mother skipped every pleasantry and shoved a property transfer agreement in front of me. "Sign it."I looked down at the address.It was my Manhattan apartment, the one I'd saved up for bit by bit over nine years from my cut as advi

While I was still in the hospital, Cecilia's feed filled up with glaciers, the Northern Lights, and that black diamond ring.She and Matteo had gone to Iceland after all. The comments beneath her photos overflowed with flattery from relatives and Family members on both sides, as though the fire in New York and the child I'd lost had never happened.While they were away, I moved out of the safe apartment where I'd lived for nine years and checked into an ordinary hotel near the airport. The room was small, with no guards and no plans taped to the wall, but for the first time in years, I slept soundly through the night.Matteo texted me long messages every day, attaching photos of glaciers and the Northern Lights."Elena, seeing all this doesn't make me happy at all.""I keep thinking about how much better it would be if you were here with me.""Cecilia is just an obligation. You're my real partner."I read those words and felt nothing but disgust.It wasn't longing. It was just his way

Three months later, the Geneva Neutral Tribunal held its annual Family summit in New York.The summit dealt exclusively with the thorniest disputes between the major crime families: territory, debts, and ceasefires. Those who sat on the arbitration panel owed no loyalty to any Family and answered to no Don.Matteo stood in the last row of the hall, clutching an audience pass.Getting that seat had cost him half the revenue rights to the DeLuca Family's last two piers.A veteran advisor from Chicago sat beside him. Matteo turned to make conversation, but the man glanced at him once, then turned away to talk to someone else.The Montero route disaster, the wedding scandal, and the two-hundred-million-dollar payout had turned him from New York's youngest Don into a pariah no one wanted to be seen with.The hall lights dimmed, and a spotlight hit the main stage.The host announced, "Please welcome Ms. Elena Costa, the youngest senior independent arbitrator ever appointed to the Neutral Tri

Two years later.At the Geneva Neutral Tribunal headquarters, I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, flipping through a Family briefing that had just been delivered.On a screen in Times Square, last month's interview with me was playing on a loop. I'd received the Tribunal's highest honor, the Gold Sword Medal, and I was the first woman ever to receive it.On another page of the briefing: news about Matteo.He'd been permanently stripped of his title as Don by the Five Families Council for repeated illegal surveillance, stalking, and harassment of a Neutral Tribunal arbitrator. The DeLuca Family had stripped him of the protection attached to the DeLuca name and reclaimed all his territory. His last legitimate business had been seized by the police.From now on, no Family would take a bullet for him, and no one in the business world would shake his hand.I closed the file. I felt nothing.In a damp basement in New York, Matteo sat wearing a sweater gone gray from too many washes, gna