Chapter 2

"Give me the phone." I reached for the encrypted handset on the table.

Luca got to the receiver first. "An expelled man doesn't touch investiture business."

"Then you dial. Access record L-17, the lakeside safe house, 1:12 a.m., three weeks ago." I stared at Selina. "All you have to ask is who brought me inside."

Her gaze rested on my face for a moment, as if she were reassessing a man she thought she had already appraised. Then she looked away.

"That's enough. Calling her your sister is just the lie you use for your lovers."

"You aren't even curious why an ordinary mediator's sister can get into a Moretti safe house?"

"I wondered three weeks ago," she said. "But the port truce hadn't been signed yet, and I couldn't let your scandal wreck the whole family's future."

That sentence cut deeper than every insult before it. She had held those photographs for three weeks and gone on kissing me, gone on sending me to the docks, gone on bringing me coffee when I worked past midnight. She had not trusted me. She had simply decided a tool should finish one last job before it was scrapped.

Luca took off his jacket, revealing a black-and-gold suit that matched Selina's. He crossed to her right side, where only an underboss or a family advisor could stand.

Selina made the announcement to the room. "After the investiture, Luca will also serve as advisor. He will be my official partner as well."

Applause went up.

Five years ago, I left New York to escape a political marriage my father had arranged. I came to Chicago under my mother's maiden name, Vale, because I wanted to know whether anyone would choose me without knowing the name Moretti.

Selina had just taken over a family that was falling apart. We got engaged in secret in an abandoned chapel, where she broke a silver Saint Jude medal in half, gave one piece to me, and kept the other for herself. She said, "A family makes a lot of choices for people. This one time, we choose only each other."

I took my half of the medal out of my inside pocket. Five years of wear had rounded the broken edge, and only the first half of the vow was still readable on the back.

"Where's your half?" I asked.

Selina's hand went to her throat without thinking, but came up empty.

Luca smiled and pulled his collar open. A reworked half medal hung against his chest, its edge set in black gold, most of the original vow ground away.

"She gave it to someone more loyal," he said.

I looked at the metal and did not ask when it started. That question no longer mattered. What mattered was that Selina had already made her choice when she handed that medal over, and had still kept me negotiating for her.

"I only want three things confirmed." I set my own half on the table. "One. You have decided to expel me from the family."

"Yes."

"Two. Our engagement ends tonight."

She paused. Luca's hand settled at her waist and she did not move away.

"Yes."

"Three. Every agreement I closed over the past five years, you intend to put under Luca's name."

"Those agreements always belonged to the Bellini family," she answered. "Who represents the family is not for you to decide."

The oath room sits behind the ballroom, and the system in its walls preserves every formal statement made before an investiture. She knew that. So did I.

I nodded. "Good."

Luca leaned over like a man who had finally won and scraped my name off the investiture guest register. The blade cut into the page and took the last stroke of ink with it.

I took my half medal back.

"Then from this moment on, everything the Bellini family gained through me is no longer my concern."