YOU CAN STAND TONIGHT, SARAH. THERE'S NO ROOM LEFT AT THE TABLE.” MY MAFIA HUSBAND LET HIS MISTRESS TAKE MY CHAIR IN FRONT OF TWENTY-FOUR RELATIVES—BUT HIS 83-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER NOTICED SOMETHING ON THE WOMAN'S PHONE AND ORDERED EVERYONE TO STAY SEATED -

Chapter 2 – A MOTHER’S SILVER LOCKET

The silence in the dining room was deafening.

Twenty-four relatives stared at me, then at Vincent, waiting for the explosion.

“A hearing?” I repeated, my voice barely a whisper. “Vincent, what is she talking about?”

Vincent walked around the mahogany table, his jaw tight. He grabbed Madeline’s arm, not gently.

“You’ve said enough. Get out of my house.”

Madeline jerked her arm away. “Don’t touch me! You promised me her seat, Vincent. You promised me she’d be gone by Friday.”

Nonna Vittoria’s grip on my hand tightened. Her knuckles were white.

“Vincent,” Nonna said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly register. “Answer your wife. What hearing?”

Vincent ran a hand through his dark hair. The stoic, untouchable mafia boss looked completely cornered. “It’s a medical petition,” he muttered.

My heart stopped. “Medical?”

“An involuntary psychiatric hold,” Madeline supplied cheerfully, adjusting her red dress. “He’s telling a judge tomorrow that you’ve suffered a nervous breakdown. That you are unfit to manage your own assets.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Six years of loyalty. Six years of washing blood out of his shirts, of smiling at public events, of selling my own mother’s jewelry to keep his men fed.

And he was going to lock me in a ward.

“Why?” I gasped. “I have never done anything but support you.”

“Because of the estate on Lake Shore Drive,” Madeline said. “The one solely in your name. He needs to leverage it by noon tomorrow, but you’d never agree to the terms.”

I looked at Vincent. I wanted him to deny it. I prayed he would call her a liar.

He didn’t. He just looked at the floor.

But then Nonna Vittoria did something that shocked everyone. She let go of my hand, reached into her pocket, and pulled out my mother’s silver locket.

The same locket I had pawned three years ago to save Vincent’s business.

I gasped. “How do you have that?”

Nonna opened it. The tiny compartment inside was empty.

“Because I bought it back,” Nonna said coldly, staring at Vincent. “And when I did, I found out exactly what was hidden inside it. Tell her, Vincent. Tell her what the key in this locket opens.”