Chapter 27 Zarina
ZARINA
Snow is falling, fat and white. The muddy ground is almost covered, flakes speckling the pavement but not yet sticking.
If today was only Christmas, if we were partaking in our traditional celebration, if I didn’t have a vial of poison stuffed in my bra, it’d be beautiful.
But today is my wedding day, and more likely than not, someone will end up dead.
I really don’t want it to be me.
My head aches, but the bubbling champagne in my hand will help with that.
I turn from the library’s wall of windows, ignoring my winter wedding dress draped artfully for a photo.
Grandfather’s portrait watches me drift toward the desk where I’ve set up my makeup, still undone, to the sideboard for a refill, to the fire to warm my hands and toes.
I ignore his uncanny gaze somehow piercing through the painting from the grave and stare at the fire.
The deadline for option three is today, now.
But I don’t know if she was successful. I don’t know if the Council agreed or if Alonso tried to kill her first. The only thing I do know is that the wedding is still on and I will do whatever I must to avoid a life as Marcus’s wife.
I down my second glass of champagne and set it on the mantel.
Pat appears at my shoulder, like I summoned them with the mere thought of what I wanted.
They hand over my favorite knife encased in its thigh sheath.
I take it, my fingers tracing the filigreed handle.
Bronze creates the shape of a noose, a teardrop ruby set into the knot.
The same shape as the necklace at my throat, a play on the Gallo name.
Today is an auspicious day for the Gallos.
No matter what happens, whether we’re removed from the Council or I marry Marcus or I die, a noose of my parents’ making is tightening around all our necks and the only choice we have left is whether to live up to the family words or not: Death before dishonor.
I snort as I hold the sheath to my thigh and clip the straps into place, yanking them tight. My robe swishes over to cover the knife when I straighten. I pat the handle through the fleece and turn to Pat. “I guess it’s time to get dressed—”
The door’s wrenched open, and Father crashes into the library.
I grasp my chest, my heart jumping, as he stumbles forward. “Father, what are you doing?”
“What did you do?” he whispers. His hair is falling from its usual coif, snowflakes still melting in the strands. I don’t know where he’s come from, what just happened, but I have a very good idea.
The door swings open again, and Mother enters with a frown coated in distaste. “Riccardo, what the hell is going on?”
He ignores her, striding toward me with enough purpose that I almost reach for my knife. He grabs my arms too tight. “What have you done!?”
“Father, what—”
He shakes me. “It was you! You must’ve done it!”
I shove him off, and he stumbles back into a side table, barely catching himself before falling. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“She took it—everything.” He digs his fingers into the sides of his head, like he’s trying to claw his brain out from his skull. “Gone.”
I stare at him, mouth agape, as his words jangle in and out of my ears. She did it. She actually fucking did it.
“We’re doomed.” Father yanks his hands down, disheveling his hair further. He turns to me, distress apparent in every inch of his body. “And it’s your fault.”
Mother locks the door behind her, trapping the four of us and Father’s news in this room. “Riccardo, calm down.”
“You.” He stomps toward her, face livid and suit jacket askew. “I’ve spent the last three decades sweeping your gaffes under the rug, taken the brunt of the blame for each one. No more. This is your fault. You and your daughter.”
Mother rolls her eyes at his theatrics, not yet understanding how tight the noose has cinched around our throats. “Stop blabbering and get to the point.”
Father sucks in a breath, his hands shaking at his sides and head wobbling on his neck. For the length of a breath, I think he’s about to strangle her. But then he deflates, the news tumbling out of him. “We’ve lost everything. And soon, the Accardis will come to take their pound of flesh.”
I snatch my glass off the mantel and then the bottle of champagne off the sideboard, pouring a generous portion as our new reality filters through me.
Andrea Tamayo is the new don of the South, and the Gallo family is now an over-glorified gang worth less than most CEOs.
Which means I’m worth nothing to Marcus Accardi.
I shake my head, a smile twitching at my lips and threatening to burst into disbelieving laughter. “She fuckin’ did it. I can’t believe it.”
Alessandra’s eyes flick between me and Father, her expression finally shifting from annoyance into wary concern. “Where were you, Riccardo?”
“At Saint Christopher’s,” he says.
She waits for him to continue and smacks his arm when he doesn’t. “Spell it out for me, for fuck’s sake.”
Father sinks into a chair in front of the fire, staring into it with much more despair than I had mustered earlier. “Andrea Tamayo was inducted into the Council.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Mother still doesn’t understand, Father’s words still too disjointed to fully explain. “She doesn’t qualify for—”
“She owns more than eighteen percent of Louredo,” I murmur. I lean against the desk and study the bubbles rising in my flute and let the smile spread, let the smallest sense of victory trickle into my blood. “Jimmy and David were the majority because—”
“We’re no longer a Cardinal Family.” Father hangs his head in his hands.
Mother’s face loses all color, and the sight of it rouses vindictive pleasure inside me.
Both of them are culpable in this. They were careless with our assets.
They put us into a position without power, forced us to broker a deal that would never benefit us.
But Mother more than Father is the cold, metallic buttress of blame from which all other consequences originate.
This moment of realization, watching her fully understand just how fucked we are, just how little power we now hold—it will live in my head forever.
She whirls on me. “How did this happen?”
“Great question, Mother—how did this happen?” I ask. “It seems Father blames you. Why is that?”
She glares at me with a level of disdain only a mother can muster. But like Father, the fight drops out of her. She shakes her head and strides to the sideboard, pouring herself a too-full glass of vodka, neat. She gulps once, twice, and grimaces at the burn. “It was supposed to be a sure thing.”
I don’t move, don’t speak. Finally, after months of asking, of running, of fighting, she’s about to explain. If I flinch, she might spook. If I speak, she might decide she’d much rather turn her ire on me than own up to her failures. That’s how it usually goes.
“Bet against the market and orchestrate the failure.” She knocks back the rest of her drink. “We would have come out with twenty times what we invested.”
“How much did we invest?” I ask.
“More than we could afford,” Father says bitterly.
Mother stares out the window, at the snow falling soft and slow and oblivious to the fiery destruction being wrought inside this room. “It was worth it. It should have been worth it.”
I study her, already dressed for the wedding in a couple hours in a ruby-red gown that rivals my own.
Her hair is pulled back into classic low bun, her nails sharp enough to pierce skin if she wanted.
She looks exactly like my mother, but for the first time ever, I see past her well-crafted armor to the woman who only ever wished to be good enough to hold the Gallo family power all on her own.
And even that is not enough to dredge up much sympathy from me. Not after everything that’s happened the last few months.
“Except it didn’t fail, did it?” I ask.
Mother shakes her head, placing her tumbler on the sideboard with a soft thud.
“And the Accardis?” I press. There are no more reasons for her to keep secrets, to keep me ignorant. “How were they meant to fix it?”
She shrugs. “Money. Property.”
“So it is a merger,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
Mother runs her tongue over her teeth, watching me like for the first time ever, she sees me as more than a marriageable pawn to be used at her convenience. She shakes her head. “And now they’ve lost their chance to become the most powerful family in Louredo.”
“Again.” And it only hits me right now, standing in the library with my parents and Pat, that this was the one thing I didn’t consider in all my scheming.
The reaction of men who are thwarted from grasping the thing they believe they’re owed.
Whether it’s the attention of women or the usurping of power in Louredo.
And Alonso Accardi has just been denied the one thing he wants most in the world for the second time in his life.
I almost drop my glass before I find the desk and set it down. “We have to leave.”
Father snorts, like he can’t believe I’ve only just come to this conclusion. “And go where, Zarina?”
“I’m not dying to pay back a debt I never owed,” I snap at him.
Mother stands before the fire, rubbing her shoulders. “Our family is still loyal. They’ll protect us.”
“Did you tell anyone the wedding’s off?” I stride toward the door, ready to run. “Do they know the Accardis are no longer our allies?”
Riccardo’s eyes bug out with his own realization, and it becomes painfully obvious that he did no such thing.
That everyone else in the house and the family is under the impression that in less than two hours, I will be marrying Marcus Accardi.
Meaning any Accardi who arrives will be allowed onto the estate, into the house.
I grab the door handle at the same moment a knock sounds on the door.
“The groom has arrived.”