Chapter 2
Romina held Osbert’s gaze. She did not blink. She did not look down at the grease drying on Crispin’s shirt, nor did she glance at the two dozen relatives who had suddenly stopped their conversations, flutes frozen against their lips. The only movement was the slow, rhythmic pulse of a vein along the sharp edge of her jaw.
Aldric mistook her silence for hesitation. Emboldened by his father’s open mockery, the thirty-eight-year-old stepped into her peripheral vision, his face contorted in drunken bravado.
"You think having two bastards makes you the head of this table, Romina?" Aldric sneered, reaching out with both hands to grab the lapel of her tailored suit. "You forgot who built this terrace."
He cocked his right fist back, intending to put her in her place before the entire family.
Romina did not flinch. As Aldric’s fist drove forward, she slipped her head two inches to the left, letting the wild blow graze the empty air beside her ear. In the same breath, her hips rotated with the brutal, practiced efficiency of a street fighter trained in cellars before she ever saw a boardroom. Her right fist drove forward in a short, devastating counterpunch that cracked squarely across Aldric’s cheekbone.
The sound of cartilage giving way echoed across the terrace like a dry branch snapping under a boot.
Aldric let out a strangled cough, his legs turning to rubber. He stumbled backward, his shoulder slamming hard into the corner of the heavy gift table. The linen tore loose; wrapped boxes, silver ribbon, and porcelain decorative trays slid over the mahogany edge, crashing violently across the flagstones in a cacophony of shattered lacquer and shredded paper.
Osbert’s amusement died in his throat. He slammed his crystal glass down onto the garden bench, bourbon sloshing over the armrest, and surged to his feet with the sudden fury of a patriarch whose authority had been publicly spat upon.
"You insolent little bitch—" Osbert snarled, lunging forward, his heavy, ringed hand reaching out to seize Romina’s shoulder.
He never touched her fabric.
Romina’s left hand struck out like an iron clamp, snatching Osbert’s wrist an inch before contact. With a sharp, torquing pivot of her heel, she levered his arm downward, wrenching the older man around with vicious, hydraulic force that turned him completely away from her children and bent his spine toward the stone.
Osbert sucked in a breath of raw pain, his knees buckling.
Before he could shout for his personal guards, the sound of leather soles clicking against stone broke through the courtyard. Two towering men in tailored gray suits—capos from the northern district, their jackets unbuttoned over shoulder holsters—stepped smoothly out of the crowd, flanking Romina like twin monoliths. A third capo, broad-shouldered and dead-eyed, stepped cleanly between Osbert and the garden bench, cutting off the patriarch’s retreat.
Osbert stopped resisting. The fight drained from his limbs as the cold reality of those three bodies registered against his temples.
Romina released his wrist with a flick of her fingers, as though discarding something unclean.
Beside the ruined gift table, Aldric scrambled to his feet, spitting a glob of blood onto the crushed silk ribbons. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, looked at the two armed capos standing at Romina’s shoulders, and pointed a trembling, disbelieving finger.
"Dad," Aldric gasped, his voice breathless and cracked with rising panic. "Why are your men protecting her?"
Osbert slowly lowered his aching hand. His rosy cheeks had drained to the color of wet sand, his eyes pinned to the woman standing before him.
Romina reached down. Her palm rested lightly, reassuringly, on Crispin’s trembling shoulder. Behind her skirt, little Etta reached out and took her brother’s sticky hand, squeezing tight.
Every single guest on the terrace turned toward the low, lethal register of Romina’s voice.
"Osbert," Romina said, the words quiet, cold, and absolute. "Tell your son whose orders you follow."
May you like
Osbert’s mouth opened, dry lips parting, but not a single sound came out.
Aldric looked frantically from his father’s frozen face to the two capos. Slowly, without a word, the lead capo lowered his head two inches in a silent, reverent bow toward Romina.
