Chapter 6

I chose the midnight blue velvet.

It was the color of a bruise before it turned black. The fabric was heavy, sweeping slightly on the floor as I walked, but the weight felt like armor.

I clasped the sapphires around my neck. They had belonged to Donato's late wife, a woman who had died before she could see her son grow into a disappointment.

I didn't look like a victim. I looked like the ocean right before a storm.

I walked into the ballroom.

The air shifted.

Conversations didn't just stop; they were severed.

I felt hundreds of eyes on me. They were looking for the cracks. They were looking for the broken wife who had been outbid for her own heritage.

I gave them nothing.

Antoine Dubois, a French associate of the Family, bowed his head as I passed.

"The Queen returns," he murmured.

I didn't smile. Queens don't smile at peasants.

I scanned the room and locked eyes with Alessandro.

He was holding a champagne glass, his knuckles white against the stem. He looked at me with a mixture of hunger and fear. He hadn't expected me to show up.

He definitely hadn't expected me to look like this.

Aria was standing next to him. She was wearing the auction necklace.

It looked ridiculous on her. The diamonds were too heavy for her delicate, bird-like frame. They didn't sit on her skin; they choked it.

She saw Alessandro looking at me.

Her jaw tightened. She whispered something in his ear, her hand clawing at his bicep, claiming territory.

Alessandro didn't look away from me.

Aria's face twisted. She let go of him and marched toward me.

The crowd parted. They smelled blood.

"Katarina," she said. Her voice was too high, too sweet. It grated on my nerves like sand in a wound.

"You look... heavy."

She touched the massive diamond necklace at her throat.

"A rock doesn't make you special, Aria," I said, my voice low enough that only she could hear. "It just makes you expensive."

Her smile faltered.

"You think you're so high above me," she hissed, stepping closer. "But you're still the woman he won't touch. You're still the furniture."

"And you are the woman he bought," I countered. "Furniture lasts. Purchases get returned."

Aria's eyes narrowed into slits.

She reached into her clutch and pulled out her phone.

"You really don't know when to quit, do you?" she whispered.

She tapped the screen and shoved the phone in my face.

I looked.

It was a video. Grainy, low-light.

It was me. And Alessandro.

Two years ago. Our anniversary. The only night that year he had touched me with anything resembling passion.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"He filmed these," Aria smirked. "He sent them to me. We watch them sometimes. We laugh at how desperate you look. Begging for scraps of love."

My stomach turned over.

He had shared our bed with her.

"Leave tonight," Aria said, her voice dripping with venom. "Leave the country. Or this goes to the press. I'll ruin you."

She pulled the phone back.

I looked at Alessandro across the room. He was watching us, oblivious to the knife his mistress was twisting in my gut.

I looked back at Aria.

"Do it," I said.

Her eyes widened.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said do it. But remember one thing, Aria."

I leaned in close.

"When you strike a match in a gas station, you don't get to choose who burns."