STOP TALKING TO HER LIKE SHE'S A CHILD!”

The room fell dead silent once more. Every eye turned to the frail woman in the wheelchair.

Sofia Moretti raised her chin. For three months, she had endured the humiliation of being spoken down to, of being treated as a mindless vegetable, of having the woman who tried to murder her brush her hair and smile in her face while planning her exile to a locked asylum.

She looked at Vanessa, who was weeping pathetic, incoherent pleas on the floor.

Then, Sofia looked at me.

Her fingers began to move. But this time, they didn't move in American Sign Language.

Her hand rose toward her own throat. She closed her eyes, took a deep, rattling breath that seemed to pull from the very depths of her soul, and forced her vocal cords together against the paralysis that had locked them.

A sound tore from her mouth—a raw, raspy, agonizing sound that sounded like grinding stones:

*"M... M... Morte."*

Death.

The entire dining hall gasped. Luca’s eyes widened in profound shock.

Sofia’s left hand rose, pointing directly at Marco Bellini, then sweeping across to point at Vanessa. Her mouth worked again, forcing out two more broken, guttural syllables:

*"N-o... f-a-m-i-g-l-i-a."*

No family.

She didn't need me to translate. Every Italian at that table understood.

Marco heard his death sentence. His mind broke under the weight of sheer animal panic. With a wild, desperate scream, he shoved the capo beside him, reached inside his tailored jacket, and pulled a snub-nosed .38 revolver from his waistband.

"Nobody touches me!" Marco screamed, waving the gun wildly across the table. "Open the gates! Luca, tell them to open the fucking gates or I’ll blow this old bitch’s head off!"

Marco leveled the barrel directly at Donna Sofia.

Without thinking, without calculating the odds or considering my own life, my body moved on pure instinct. I threw myself across Sofia’s lap, wrapping my arms around her frail shoulders, using my own back to shield her head and chest from Marco’s gun.

*BANG.*

The gunshot was deafening within the enclosed dining hall. Plaster rained down from the ceiling as the bullet went wide, deflected at the last microsecond by Luca Moretti’s bare hand smashing into Marco’s wrist.

The sound of snapping bone echoed through the room like a dry branch cracking in winter. Marco shrieked as Luca twisted his arm behind his back, disarming him in a single, fluid, terrifying motion.

Luca didn't shoot him. He slammed Marco face-first onto the mahogany dining table, right into the puddle of spilled red wine and shattered crystal, pressing the barrel of Marco’s own .38 against the base of his skull.

"In my house," Luca snarled, his voice vibrating with absolute fury. "In front of my mother. In front of the girl who gave her back her life."

"Luca, please!" Marco sobbed, his face smeared with vintage wine and blood. "Please, don't!"

Luca looked up from Marco’s writhing form. He looked across the table at me.

I was still draped over Sofia, trembling violently, my eyes wide with shock. Sofia’s left hand was stroking my hair, patting my shoulder with infinite tenderness, comforting *me* even as the smell of gunpowder hung thick in the air.

Luca’s expression shifted. The murderous rage didn't leave his eyes, but a new, profound resolve entered them.

"Antonio. Armando," Luca commanded quietly.

"Yes, Don Luca?"

"Take Marco and Vanessa to the cellar beneath the docks. Call Miller and tell him to be there in twenty minutes. If he doesn't show, bring his family too."

Luca leaned down, whispering into Marco’s ear so the whole room could hear: "You will sign over every ship, every warehouse, every dollar the Bellini family has accumulated since 1920. And then... you will pay for my mother's pain."

Armando and two guards hauled Marco off the table. He kicked and screamed like a toddler being dragged to the dark, while Antonio seized Vanessa by her emerald dress, dragging her across the floor as she wept, clawing at the rug until her manicured nails snapped and bled.