Chapter 1 - The Mark of the Fallen
The air in the grand hall turned freezing,
as if the winter of Milan had suddenly breached the walls.
Alessandro’s fingers did not tremble,
but they tightened around the blue wool of the rabbit,
with a ferocity that made the seams groan.
I reached out to grab Emma,
pulling her small body into the folds of my apron,
sensing a danger far greater than Vivian’s hand.
The twelve bosses sat like statues,
their eyes darting between the child,
the toy,
and the man who held their lives in his palm.
"Where did she get this?"
Alessandro repeated,
his voice dropping to a register that vibrated in the floorboards.
I swallowed hard,
my throat feeling like it was filled with glass.
"It was a gift,"
I whispered,
my voice cracking under the weight of a hundred stares.
"From her father,"
I added,
referring to the man who had died in a supposed car accident,
leaving me with nothing but debts and a daughter.
Alessandro’s gaze snapped to mine,
and for the first time,
I saw something other than cold calculation in his eyes.
I saw a flicker of recognition,
a ghost of a memory that seemed to haunt him.
He turned the rabbit over,
tracing the black symbol stitched into the inner ear,
a serpent coiled around a broken crown.
It was the sigil of the Vancini family,
a bloodline that was supposed to have been extinguished,
five years ago in the Great Purge.
Vivian stepped forward,
her face twisted in a mask of indignation.
"Alessandro,"
she snapped,
"it is just a dirty rag,"
"why are you making a scene over a maid’s trash?"
He didn't look at her.
He didn't even acknowledge she existed.
Instead,
he raised his hand,
and the guards at the door clicked their safeties off.
The sound echoed like thunder,
causing the guests to shift uncomfortably.
"This rabbit,"
Alessandro said,
addressing the room at large,
"was crafted by my own mother,"
"for the daughter of my brother,"
"the brother I was told died without an heir."
A collective gasp rippled through the twelve families.
If Emma was a Vancini,
she wasn't just a maid’s daughter.
She was royalty,
and she was a threat to every person who had profited from her father's death.
I felt the world tilt on its axis,
as the secret I had hidden for three years,
May you like
was torn open by a single toy.
***
