"I destroyed the Ferro heir with my own hands. Mietitore was shattered by my order. It no longer exists."
"You will not spread such baseless fear!"
I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat. Aldric Valente. My enemy for as long as I had drawn breath.
And the one who had wounded me deepest of all.
He was right about one thing. I was the Ferro heir he claimed to have destroyed.
I was also the only other true power that had emerged from the Old Country alongside him, the only one who had survived the annihilation of the original families.
The year the old dynasty was wiped out, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.
For years after that, Aldric treated me well.
The Ferro bloodline breeds cold. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.
Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Old Country.
So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Commission's stronghold, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.
Years as husband and wife. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.
Until Aldric met a civilian woman, and everything veered off course.
That woman was Elara, the one he now called his wife.
Elara was flesh and bone, a nobody from outside the families. She could not set foot in the Commission's inner world. The only way was to replace the nothing inside her with real power, with the leverage and legacy of a true dynasty.
Aldric searched every corner of the organization and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.
So he turned his attention to me.
He deliberately let the other families discover my true identity as the Ferro heir, then rallied every crew, every capo, every soldier in the three tiers of the underworld under the banner of justice to pin me down. They called it a cleansing. They called it restoring order. What it was, was a hit sanctioned by every man who owed Aldric Valente a favor.
I was already pregnant by then. My body had weakened, and I had no strength left to fight back.