On the drive to the Academy, I sent a message to the Family's legal fixers. My thumb moved across the screen with the kind of calm that only comes after something inside you has already broken and rebuilt itself in the space of a breath.
[Prepare a dissolution agreement per the blood contract. I want Davide Ferraro out with nothing. Not a dollar. Not a territory. Not a name anyone will answer to.]
[My daughter was assaulted at the Academy. Bring a full team. I want them to pay dearly.]
[How dare a freeloader like Davide keep a comare and a bastard son on the side while living off Valente blood money.]
The consigliere's reply came in four seconds: [Understood, Donna. We're moving.]
They called me Donna. Because that's what I was. What I'd always been. The sole heir to the Valente Syndicate, the most powerful crime family on the Eastern Seaboard. I'd hidden it. Lived quietly. Trusted the wrong man with a piece of what my mother had built. And now my daughter had puncture wounds on her body because of it.
My thumb found my mother's signet ring and traced the crest slowly, deliberately, the way you run your hand along the edge of a blade before you use it.
Davide's fate was already sealed. He just didn't know it yet.
When I arrived at the Academy with Emilia, the first person I saw was Luna Caruso, standing outside the wrought-iron gates like she owned the ground beneath her feet.
She was surrounded by other parents from the class. Women in cashmere and pearls, clustered around her like courtiers around a queen. Their voices carried across the courtyard, bright and performative in the late afternoon air.
"Luna, you're so low-key! If it weren't for all this, we wouldn't have known your husband runs the Valente territory downtown."
"Exactly! No wonder I thought you had such a refined aura the moment I saw you. That kind of grace only comes with real Family money."
"We're all here to support you today. We're proper mothers, and we can't let some low-class homewrecker push you around."
"Right! What good could come from a homewrecker's daughter? Massimo is truly the heir of the Valente name. Standing up for his family at such a young age!"
Even the teacher had positioned herself at Luna's elbow, her posture deferential, her smile too wide.
"Luna, just let me know Massimo's favorite foods, and we'll adjust the Academy menu to suit his taste from now on."