Ginevra smirked. She had disentangled herself from Nico's arms now, standing on her own, and the pain in her stomach had evaporated as completely as morning fog. Her voice dripped with mockery, each word placed with the precision of a woman who had rehearsed this moment in the mirror.
"Rosalia, you're done for. Completely ruined. From now on, even a stray dog has more dignity than you."
I shot them both a cold glance — one look, unhurried, moving from her face to his and back again, cataloguing everything — and turned to leave. My heels were silent on the hardwood. I had learned to walk without sound in this house. I had learned to do many things without sound.
"Not so fast." Nico's voice was sharp, edged with something dark — the tone he used when he was about to make a decision that couldn't be walked back. "Don't think you're walking away from this, Rosalia."
I stopped. The hallway stretched ahead of me, dim and narrow, the soldier by the entrance shifting his weight almost imperceptibly, his hand drifting a half-inch closer to his waistband. I turned back slowly, meeting Nico's glare head-on.
"I'm going to make sure you regret ever betraying me," he continued.
Betray him.
The sheer audacity almost made me laugh. He was the one who had taken another woman into his bed while I balanced his books and buried his evidence. He was the one who had skimmed tribute payments owed to the Commission and used my family's name — my family's name, the Ferrante name, the name I had hidden for five years to protect him — as collateral for deals he never intended to honor. He was the one who threw everything away. Yet somehow, in the story he told himself while he smoothed his tie and lied to his own reflection, I was the villain.
I let out a quiet chuckle. The sound was small and precise, and it landed in the silence of that room like a coin dropped on marble.
Then I threw his own words right back at him. "Nico, don't think this is over. You'll learn soon enough what happens when you mess with me."