Chapter 6

After the ceremony, Luca took me to the Caruso estate outside Las Vegas.

My father waited in his study. We had not stood in the same room for ten years.

He did not hug me. He set the Caruso seal on the desk.

"You can come home as my daughter, or you can return as my heir. You cannot come back to clean up that man's mistakes again."

I picked up the seal.

The next morning, Vincent received a report from the Russo finance team.

The funds that had provided low interest loans, port access, and debt guarantees for seven years all led back to the Caruso trust.

The chief financial officer told him that without my signature, the Russo group could not close its acquisitions. The casinos might also lose access to cash settlement services within a month.

Vincent tore the report apart and ordered his men to find new investors.

No one returned his calls after learning that Caruso Atlantic had withdrawn.

He finally saw the truth. I had never stood beside his empire as a guest. I had been holding it up without my name on the building.

Sophia arrived at the estate that afternoon.

She still used the tone of a family leader.

"Vincent loves you. Bianca was only a business arrangement. Restore the guarantees, and we can repair this."

I placed a stack of records in front of her.

The files covered her medical transfer after the shooting, Marco's legal fees during a federal investigation, secret debt left by Vincent's father, and three emergency cash infusions into the Russo casinos.

I had paid for all of it.

"You called me your daughter when you needed me. When you needed Falcone guns, you expected me to raise Bianca's child."

Sophia's face turned gray.

"I made a terrible mistake."

"You made a choice. Now I am making mine."

I asked the house manager to show her out.

Vincent came to the gate that night and stayed in the rain.

I met him under the covered entrance. Water ran down his expensive suit.

"I will end every deal with the Falcones," he said. His eyes were red. "I will give you a larger wedding. You will be the only woman in the Russo family."

"Would you have come back if Luca had not entered the chapel?"

Vincent said nothing.

"Would you be standing here if the Russo credit lines were still open?"

He could not answer that question either.

"I did not leave because Bianca won something from me. I left because you treated my love as permission to humiliate me."

The next morning, Vincent left my old engagement ring at the gate.

I sent it to an auction. The money went to a local shelter for women leaving abusive relationships.

I had no reason to pick up what I had already thrown away.