Potentia
Three days after Adrian Castellano and I got into an argument, he agrees to accompany his assistant, Iris Medici, on a trip home while posing as her boyfriend.
Everyone in the Castellano family quietly studies my reaction. They expect me to check up on him nonstop and then spiral into a jealous rage like I always do.
What they don't realize is that I've changed while Adrian and Iris are away.
The proposal I spent six months working day and night on is suddenly credited to Iris, yet I don't complain. Instead, I help her restructure the entire presentation.
Years of bad debt in the southern territory get dumped on me because Adrian refuses to take the fall himself. When he pressures me to confess before the council, I do.
He even wants Iris to replace me as the family's Consigliere. Once again, I hand over my position without an argument and personally cast my vote in her favor.
Convinced that she has won, Iris gloats, "I knew it. The harder you push someone like Lena, the more she digs in her heels.
"Freeze her out for a few days, though, and she'll come crawling back on her own. Just look at her now. You've been gone, and without you around to protect her, she's been perfectly obedient."
Adrian believes her. He calls me into his study alone and speaks as though he's granting me a favor.
"If you keep your head down and behave the way you have lately, we can start picking a wedding date."
He seems to have forgotten that while he and Iris were away, I'd filed a formal request to leave the Castellano family, and he had personally signed off on it.
He and I no longer have anything to do with each other.
In three days, my father, Don Ricci, will restore my name to the Ricci family roster.