The air was thick with the scent of lilies and impending death in Don Tony Marino's master suite.
As his daughter-in-law, I was expected to maintain composure, a mask I wore expertly through the hushed murmurs of the family.
But nothing could prepare me for the scene that unfolded before my eyes.
My husband, Sonny, burst into the death room, dragging a garish woman with too much makeup.
His frantic shouts echoed: "Pop, I' m in love! This is Luna. I want an annulment from Izzy!"
He declared his intention to marry this gold-digger, shattering our family's most crucial alliance with my father, Don Marcus Bellucci.
A betrayal so audacious, it nearly brought the dying Don back to life in pure rage.
The shock reverberated through the hushed capos and family gathered outside the door.
Sonny, blinded by obsession, publicly shamed me, calling me cold and calculating.
Then, Luna, the parasite, offered her  "brilliant"  plan to save the family: an outdated cryptocurrency money-laundering scheme.
A plan so simple, so fatally flawed, even street dealers knew better.
My heart ached, not for Sonny, but for the profound disrespect shown to my family, to the very alliance cemented by my brothers' sacrifice.
How could he be so foolish? So reckless?
Was this truly the end of everything our combined families had built, all for a cheap Vegas grifter?
But as Luna babbled, a quiet, cold determination ignited within me.
I calmly exposed her amateur scheme, revealing its fatal flaws for everyone to hear.
In that fraught moment, a dying Don Tony Marino looked at me not as just an ally's daughter, but as the only one capable of confronting the chaos.
Little did I know, this public humiliation was just the first tremor.
The true reckoning for our family, and the rise of a new era, was about to begin.