Chapter 2

Isabella POV

The roaring flames of Javier's estate melted into the blinding white of a New York blizzard. I was eighteen again. The biting wind whipped my face as I stood before the towering wrought-iron gates of the Hobbs estate in Long Island.

My six-year-old sister, Abby, shivered violently against my side, her small fingers turning blue. My father, Arturo-a mere Associate accountant-stood before the armed Soldiers, his posture bent in desperate humility.

"Please," he begged over the howling wind. "My wife... she's freezing."

The guards just smirked, their rifles resting lazily against their chests. Capo Dolphus Hobbs was inside, warm and comfortable, deliberately leaving his illegitimate half-sister, my mother Annabel, out in the storm to remind us of our place. Thirty agonizing minutes passed before the heavy gates finally groaned open. My father's jaw was clenched in silent humiliation, but he swallowed his pride and ushered us inside. That day, the frost bit deep into my bones, etching the absolute law of our world into my soul: *Blood and power were the only things that mattered.*

The Opulent Parlor was suffocatingly warm, reeking of expensive cigars and heavy perfume. Matriarch Hertha Hobbs sat on her velvet armchair like a queen on a throne, her ruby-encrusted cane resting against her knee. She was busy fawning over her legitimate granddaughter, Bianca, grooming her for the upcoming mafia summits. But when we entered, Hertha's vulture-like gaze snapped to me.

I wore no makeup, my cheap dress damp from the snow, but I saw the immediate flash of threat in her eyes as she took in my face.

"Look at her," Hertha spat, her voice dripping with venom. "A face like a Siren. She reeks of cheap seduction. Mark my words, she'll spread her legs for some rival street thug and drag our honor through the mud. She's a walking violation of *The Supremacy of Loyalty*."

My mother, Annabel, paled, her hands trembling. "Mother, please. Isabella is a good girl-"

"Silence!" Hertha's cane struck the marble floor with a sharp crack. "You have no right to speak in this room, Annabel. You carry the dirty blood of a bastard, and you've passed that filth onto your spawn."

"Don't yell at my mommy!" Abby cried out, her tiny fists clenched.

Bianca sneered from her plush seat. "Shut your mouth, you little rat."

Before my mother could apologize, Bette Hobbs-Dolphus's wife-stepped forward, eager to score points with the Matriarch. "What do you expect from an Associate's litter?" Bette mocked, her Botox-stiffened face twisting into an ugly smirk. "Arturo is nothing but cannon fodder. And this one," she gestured to me, "thinks her pretty face will let her climb out of the gutter."

Something inside me snapped. The freezing submission I had learned at the gates vanished. I pulled Abby behind me, my posture straightening. I didn't cry. I looked right past Bianca and locked my deep phoenix eyes onto Bette.

"Aunt Bette," I said, my voice eerily calm, slicing through the tension. "I was under the impression that in this house, the Matriarch is the absolute law."

Bette blinked, caught off guard. "Excuse me?"

I shifted my gaze respectfully to Hertha. "Grandmother is the Elder. She is the only authority here. Yet you, a wife married into this family, take it upon yourself to lecture Hobbs blood before the Matriarch has even given her final word. Is that not a blatant disrespect of her power?"

The parlor fell dead silent. I had aimed straight for Hertha's pathological need for control.

Hertha's eyes narrowed, but not at me. She turned her sharp, predatory glare toward her daughter-in-law. "Know your place, Bette," Hertha hissed coldly. "I do not need a Capo's wife speaking for me."

Bette's face flushed a mottled red, her mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish as she stepped back in utter humiliation.

I kept my face perfectly neutral, but as I looked back at Hertha, I found the Matriarch studying me. The disgust in her eyes had shifted into something far more dangerous-calculation.