The Woman Who Survived the Falcone Family

My cousin had the kindest heart in the world.

She married my fianc, the Don of the Falcone Family, then told me that the more power a man held, the more twisted he became, and that she was only walking through fire to spare me from him.

She quietly sold off one of her husband's safe houses and said I'd taken the laundered cash to keep a pretty boy on the side.

She bled the Family's tribute dry through accounts only she could touch and said it was to cover my gambling debts.

She got pregnant by her husband's own brother, the Underboss, hemorrhaged from the betrayal of the bloodline, and said I'd been carrying on with a string of kept men while she kindly tried to stop me, and that I'd shoved her down and caused the miscarriage.

In the end her husband shipped me across the border to atone for it all.

There her lover violated me and cut me to pieces.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day my cousin had her affair and lost the baby.

Every time Bianca Marino went off to meet her lover, she told her husband, Salvatore Falcone, that I was the one who'd called for her.

Sometimes it was that I'd been beaten by a jealous wife after getting caught as the other woman and needed comforting. Sometimes it was that men were hunting me for gambling debts and I needed protection. She even used the one about me getting some private work done by a back-alley surgeon and needing someone to look after me afterward.

If Salvatore hadn't shown up at my door in my last life, grinding his teeth as he listed off my crimes, I never would have known my own life was apparently so eventful.

Right now, his calls were blowing up my phone again.

The moment I answered, his furious voice exploded against my ear.

"Adriana Conti, it's this late and you've kept Bianca at your place again. For what?"

"I've put up with you long enough. Bianca is your cousin, not your mother. You're a grown woman. Can you stop clinging to her and sucking her dry?"

"She's married. She's pregnant. Have you got any shame at all? Quit dragging her into your messes day and night. Do you honestly not know how exhausting you are?"

"Or is this all because I cut you loose once, so now you're holding a grudge and trying to wreck my family? Bianca is a simple, good-hearted woman. If you keep using her like this, don't blame me for what I do next. Send her back to me. Now."

He went on like that, raging, the sheer volume of it hurting my ear.

The truth was, back when I'd been promised to Salvatore, I'd thought he was a gentle, decent man, the rarest thing in his world.

But every time he treated me well, Bianca would dig up some story about a man of the Family who'd buried his own wife in the marshes to warn me off.

Men in this life were liars by nature, she'd say. The more untouchable a man looked, the more dangerous he was.

And then, during the cold spell between Salvatore and me, she was the one who stepped in, tender and attentive, to become his confidante.

While she championed his side, she also slipped in plenty of stories about me, some on purpose and some made to look accidental.

With Bianca "helping," Salvatore and I drifted further and further apart.

If I hadn't happened to spot Bianca's lingerie sitting in Salvatore's private rooms, I'd still have been counting myself lucky to have such a clever cousin, one who'd helped me see a dangerous man for what he was.

Not long after, she married him, bound to the Family by blood and oath.

After that, I had the good sense to keep my distance from the two of them.

Salvatore didn't see it that way.

I got his roaring interrogations all the time.

My whole life, outside of my own quiet work, came down to explaining where Bianca was.

But I never actually knew what Bianca was doing.

I could only stick to whatever excuse she'd handed me beforehand and stall through the pressure.

It wasn't until the day Salvatore stormed into my home, tore into me in a blind fury, and then stuffed me into a sack and shipped me across the border that I understood I'd been the scapegoat all along.

When I thought back on his revenge in my last life, and on how Bianca and her lover had silenced me for good, a flame of anger rose up in me.

Salvatore, today I'm going to make you tear open every rotten thing your Family has done, with your own hands.

A cold smile tugged at my mouth as I spoke into the phone. "Bianca's busy unclogging a drain right now. She can't come back yet."

Then my face went cold, and I switched the phone off, done wasting another word on him.

But soon there was a knock at the door.

I'd barely turned the lock when a tremendous force slammed it open and sent me stumbling backward.

Before I could react, several of his enforcers seized me and pinned me down.

Salvatore came stamping in, heavy-footed, hunting roughly for any sign of Bianca.

He turned my little two-bedroom apartment upside down.

And found nothing.

"You said Bianca was unclogging a drain. So where is she?"

His face was red as he rushed up to me, demanding an answer.

Looking at all that rage on his face, the sweetness of revenge stirred to life inside me. I went very still, and beneath the grip of his men, my thumb found the bare place where a wedding ring should have sat, turning against skin that remembered everything taken from me.

I arched an eyebrow and answered at my own pace. "I only said she was unclogging a drain. I never said it was at my place. Maybe she's unclogging one over at your brother's. Why don't you go check?"

A cold light flashed in his eyes, and he grabbed a fistful of my hair.

"Don't get clever with me," he said, his voice low. "I'll ask you one last time. Where have you hidden Bianca?"

Bianca always kept her movements buried, the way the Family buried everything that mattered. I was only ever the one who took the fall for her. How would I have any idea where she was?

I forced past the pain and said it straight. "She's a grown woman with two working legs. You think I can keep tabs on where she goes? I'm not her mother."

It wasn't the answer he wanted, and Salvatore's eyes turned vicious in an instant.

He let go of my hair and slapped me across the face, hard enough that my head rang.

Anger flared in me.

But so did anticipation.

This was already enough to make him angry?

A far bigger rage was still waiting for him.

Seeing the stubbornness in my eyes, Salvatore patted my cheek, slow and deliberate, one tap after another. The two soldiers behind him stood like furniture, faces empty, hands loose at their sides. "You think because you've got a hard mouth, there's nothing I can do to you?"

He dug my phone out of my pocket, powered it on, held it up to my face to unlock it, then started scrolling through my contacts.

When he found my emergency contact, a cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

He placed the call.

"Honey, what is it?"

It was my husband, Marco Greco, his voice gentle as always.

I started to speak, but one of the soldiers clamped a hand over my mouth, choking off any sound.

"You're Adriana Conti's husband, right?" Salvatore said, his tone flat and laced with contempt.

"Who is this?" A strange man's voice coming through my phone made Marco's pitch jump. He was clearly on edge.

Salvatore looked straight at me, taunting.

"I'm Adriana's ex. Don't worry, though. I'm married now. I've got no interest in her."

Marco was silent for two seconds. "Then why are you calling me from her phone?"

"No reason. I just thought you should know a few things about that lovely wife of yours."

"This woman's personal life is a mess. The whole time we were together she was sneaking off behind my back, chasing other men."

"It made me sick. So I broke it off."

"For years she's lived off my wife like a leech. Borrowed our family's villa to cheat in, got hooked on gambling, and ran up debts she made my wife clear out of the Family's own coffers to pay."

"You probably don't even know this. Your wife was out there being some man's mistress and got beaten by his wife."

"Last week she went under the knife for restoration surgery and had my wife sit with her through it. A married woman, going to get herself fixed up down there. Saving her so-called 'first time' for some lover she's got on the side, you think?"

"Marrying a woman this filthy. Don't you find it humiliating?"

"A man who lives like you really is pathetic. Wearing this many horns every single day must be exhausting. If I were you, I'd have died of shame a long time ago."

Salvatore unloaded all of it, grinding me into the dirt with the calm of a man reciting a debt ledger.

On the other end, Marco went quiet, and stayed quiet.

Marco and I had always been happy since we married.

He was decent and kind, gentle and attentive with me.

In all our time married, no matter how badly we fought, he never tired of soothing me, talking me down softly and reasonably.

But this time, it seemed Salvatore had angered him past the point of speaking at all.

Salvatore hung up and looked at me, smug. "Well? Still won't tell me where Bianca is?"

The soldier took his hand off my mouth.

"You broke into my home. You're holding me here, you hit me, you're spreading lies. All of that is against the law."

I glared at Salvatore, wanting nothing more than to tear this fool apart.

Seeing me still defiant only made him angrier. "The law?" A short laugh, no warmth in it. "Then let me show you what really breaking the law looks like."

He gave the order to the rest of his men with a single tilt of his head.

"Trash the place."

At once they tore through my apartment like they'd lost their minds.

The home that had been clean and tidy was rubble within minutes.

Not one thing left whole.

I bit out, "Salvatore, you think you can do whatever you want and never answer for it? You're really not afraid of the law?"

He sneered, his whole face dripping with disdain.

"The law goes after gold-digging trash like you. How much have you bled out of Bianca these past few years? You don't even know the number, do you? Every single thing in your home was bought with Bianca's money. I'm smashing my own things. What's the problem?"

Every word came out ringing and self-righteous.

As if he weren't committing a crime, but handing out a punishment to someone who deserved it.

I checked the time. Less than half an hour until Bianca's miscarriage.

The show was about to begin.

I held the anger down and spoke to him, almost amused. "Or you could wait a little longer. Your wife's going to call you any minute now."

Seeing me still unbothered drove him wild. "Still running your mouth? Fine. Today I'll ruin you completely."

"Take her downstairs!"

The soldiers dragged me to the entrance of the building, out past the doormen who looked anywhere but at me.

The whole spectacle quickly drew the eyes of everyone passing by.

When Salvatore saw the crowd growing, he made a point of announcing my "crimes" loudly, right there in front of everyone, the way a man does when he owns the street and knows it.

In no time, the people around me were all pointing and muttering.

"This is going too far. A grown woman her age, bleeding her pregnant cousin dry. That's just hurting people, plain and simple. Her cousin must be a saint to keep putting up with her. If it were me, I'd have kicked her to the curb ages ago."

"This is your classic bloodsucking relative. Resents you when you're poor, terrified of you when you're rich, lazy and greedy herself, only knows how to take from the people around her. My wife got dragged into debt by a cousin just like this. She's still on pills over it."

"Women like this are vampires. They latch onto one person after another. Whoever they touch is finished."

"And she's filthy on top of it. Married, and still chasing pretty men and playing the mistress. Living in the same building as a woman like her. What rotten luck."

They cursed until spit flew, every one of them treating me like the worst kind of criminal.

Salvatore looked down his nose at me, goading. "Well? Still want to keep that mouth running?"

He thought he had my throat in his hand, and was just waiting for me to break.

I let out a cold laugh, full of scorn. "The most feared Don in the territory, and this is all you've got? A handful of people on one block. So what if they curse me to pieces? I'll just move and it'll all blow over. You should bring in the ones who run their mouths to the whole underworld, put it on every screen in the city. That's how you actually ruin someone, drag their name through the mud for good."

His face darkened. He rolled the cufflink at his wrist once between thumb and finger, slow. "Fine," he said through his teeth. "I'll give you what you want."

And he made another call.

The anticipation in me only grew.

Go ahead.

The bigger you make this, the better.

Let the whole world know the scandal sitting inside the most powerful Family in the territory.

Salvatore had reach. Within minutes a swarm of them turned up, every face from the surrounding blocks, every cheap phone held up at me, broadcasting to the court of the underworld he'd convened in the street.

"Listen up, everybody. I got a story worth hearing. This woman in front of you? Don't let the plain dress fool you. She's rotten all the way through."

"For years she's lived off her cousin like a leech. Whenever the cash ran dry, she came crawling back for more. And her cousin's carrying a child, big with it, and this one treats her like hired muscle. Sends her out on errands every single day, drags her through the markets, and when she drinks herself blind, the cousin has to come clean up the mess, belly and all."

"Her cousin treats her like blood, and instead of gratitude she spends like there's no tomorrow, sticks her cousin with every tab. And it's not just bleeding her cousin dry. She took over her cousin's villa to keep a kept boy, and maxed out her cousin's spare card paying off some gambling debt to men you don't cross."

"And here's the real kicker. This one sleeps around like it's a calling. Married woman, still messing around every day. Past the boy at the villa, there's plenty more on the outside. No conscience in her. Knew a man was taken and went after him anyway, got beaten for it by his wife and still didn't learn. Went and got herself cut open down there, playing the innocent to reel in more men. I hear she's been treated for the pox ten times over these few years. Never seen a woman this filthy. Like she'd die if she went one day without a man."

They piled invented sin after invented sin onto me, telling it like they'd witnessed every second.

Pure fabrication, blown bigger and bigger until it filled the street.

In no time every screen was flooded with people cursing my name.

"Damn, her cousin and her husband got it rough, chained to a shameless slut like this."

"Dio, that's not even a woman. That's a walking tumor."

"People like her are a danger to everyone near them."

The outrage spread fast. Within moments my face had climbed to the top of every feed in the territory.

"Leech." "Poison Cousin." "Town Bicycle." Names like these became mine.

They kept fanning it, the crowd working itself hotter alongside them, until they couldn't hold back. They started pelting me with eggs and rotten vegetables.

A few men drinking outside the social club flat-out hurled their beer bottles at me.

I stood in a heap of garbage like a lamb waiting for slaughter, taking every word they threw.

Then Marco came toward me, shouldering out of the packed bodies.

Looking at that familiar face, my lonely, battered heart felt like it had found somewhere to rest.

For me, Marco was the one solid thing at my back.

No matter what the world out there did to me, he'd always settle me, patient, and put right whatever was broken.

He was the man I loved, and more than that, the safe harbor I leaned on.

In that moment, all I wanted was to throw myself into his arms.

I let every guard down at once and walked toward him.

But the instant I touched him, he shoved me away without a flicker of mercy.

I had no time to brace. My balance went, and I fell straight backward onto the ground.

Broken glass littered the stones, and the shards drove deep into my palms and my thighs.

The raw, stabbing pain shot through my head, but it was my heart that was cut deeper, that hurt worse.

Even Marco didn't believe me?

"Adriana, I never imagined you'd turn out to be this kind of person."

Marco's face was dark, his eyes full of disappointment. His palms dragged down the front of his trousers, once, the way a man wipes off something he's already decided to let go.

"All the years we've been bound, I treated you like something precious. Anything you wanted, I gave it. I never once raised my voice at you, never let you feel slighted for a heartbeat."

"Your health was poor, so I taught myself to cook proper meals for you, did everything to build you back up, layered blankets on you, kept you warm, terrified you'd come to the slightest harm."

"And you?"

"You went behind my back to bleed your cousin dry, to gamble, to throw away your own decency and your name."

"The body I worked so hard to nurse whole again, you ruined it in that kind of filthy, disgusting business."

"Adriana, you're degrading yourself, and you're trampling all over what we swore."

Marco, always so gentle, had never come apart like this before.

His voice broke from shouting, every word soaked with the deepest disappointment in me.

Seeing him like this hurt worse. I forced myself up through the pain and tried to explain.

"Marco, I"

Before I could finish, he slapped me across the face.

"Shut up. Don't say my name. You don't deserve to."

Then he pulled the wedding ring from his finger and threw it at my face.

"We're done. I want out."

His cold, merciless contempt cut straight into me.

And that slap brought everything I'd believed in crashing down.

I stood frozen, like the soul had been pulled out of me. Without thinking, my thumb found the bare skin where his ring used to sit, turning the empty finger, counting in silence everything they had taken from me.

Salvatore seized the moment to sneer.

"Adriana, now you know what it feels like to be ruined, don't you? A filthy woman like you, greedy, throwing herself at any man who passes, you don't deserve anyone's love, and you sure don't deserve everything Bianca did for you."

"Lucky I saw through you early and cut a leech like you loose. Having ever wanted you is the single greatest shame of my life."

"The only thing you were good for in this world was bringing a woman as fine as Bianca to my side. From here on, you can enjoy being spat on by everyone with eyes. I won't let Bianca near you again. Let's see how you survive without her protection."

His little speech struck a chord with every last one of them at once.

All together, the comments, the crowd, the men with the phones, they opened up on me with an endless stream of filth.

The weight of a whole crowd turning its finger on you is a terrifying thing.

Even braced for it, I couldn't stop myself from falling apart.

Just then Salvatore's phone rang.

The caller was Bianca.

The second he answered, her sobbing came through the line.

"Salvatore, I... I lost the baby."

His eyes went red in an instant. The cufflink he'd been rolling between his fingers went still against his palm. "What happened?"

Bianca stammered it out, her breath catching a beat too soon, the way grief does when it's been rehearsed. "It was Adriana. She was out there carrying on with a pack of pretty boys. I only tried to gently talk some sense into her, and she shoved me down. She made me lose the baby."

Her words let me, caught dead in the eye of the storm, breathe out hard in relief.

It was all finally about to end.