Page 68 of Sapphires and Snakes

The door swings open again, and Mother enters with a frown coated in distaste. “Riccardo, what the hell is going on?”

He ignores her, striding toward me with enough purpose that I almost reach for my knife. He grabs my arms too tight. “What have you done!?”

“Father, what?—”

He shakes me. “It was you! You must’ve done it!”

I shove him off, and he stumbles back into a side table, barely catching himself before falling. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“She took it—everything.” He digs his fingers into the sides of his head, like he’s trying to claw his brain out from his skull. “Gone.”

I stare at him, mouth agape, as his words jangle in and out of my ears. She did it. She actually fucking did it.

“We’re doomed.” Father yanks his hands down, disheveling his hair further. He turns to me, distress apparent in every inch of his body. “And it’s your fault.”

Mother locks the door behind her, trapping the four of us and Father’s news in this room. “Riccardo, calm down.”

“You.” He stomps toward her, face livid and suit jacket askew. “I’ve spent the last three decades sweeping your gaffes under the rug, taken the brunt of the blame for each one. No more. This isyourfault. You and your daughter.”

Mother rolls her eyes at his theatrics, not yet understanding how tight the noose has cinched around our throats. “Stop blabbering and get to the point.”

Father sucks in a breath, his hands shaking at his sides and head wobbling on his neck. For the length of a breath, I think he’s about to strangle her. But then he deflates, the news tumbling out of him. “We’ve lost everything. And soon, the Accardis will come to take their pound of flesh.”

I snatch my glass off the mantel and then the bottle of champagne off the sideboard, pouring a generous portion as our new reality filters through me. Andrea Tamayo is the new don of the South, and the Gallo family is now an over-glorified gang worth less than most CEOs. Which means I’m worth nothing to Marcus Accardi.

I shake my head, a smile twitching at my lips and threatening to burst into disbelieving laughter. “She fuckin’ did it. I can’t believe it.”

Alessandra’s eyes flick between me and Father, her expression finally shifting from annoyance into wary concern. “Where were you, Riccardo?”

“At Saint Christopher’s,” he says.

She waits for him to continue and smacks his arm when he doesn’t. “Spell it out for me, for fuck’s sake.”

Father sinks into a chair in front of the fire, staring into it with much more despair than I had mustered earlier. “Andrea Tamayo was inducted into the Council.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Mother still doesn’t understand, Father’s words still too disjointed to fully explain. “She doesn’t qualify for?—”

“She owns more than eighteen percent of Louredo,” I murmur. I lean against the desk and study the bubbles rising in my flute and let the smile spread, let the smallest sense of victory trickle into my blood. “Jimmy and David were the majority because?—”

“We’re no longer a Cardinal Family.” Father hangs his head in his hands.

Mother’s face loses all color, and the sight of it rouses vindictive pleasure inside me. Both of them are culpable in this. They were careless with our assets. They put us into a position without power, forced us to broker a deal that would never benefit us. But Mother more than Father is the cold, metallic buttress of blame from which all other consequences originate. This moment of realization, watching her fully understand just how fucked we are, just how little power we now hold—it will live in my head forever.

She whirls on me. “How did this happen?”

“Great question, Mother—how did this happen?” I ask. “It seems Father blames you. Why is that?”

She glares at me with a level of disdain only a mother can muster. But like Father, the fight drops out of her. She shakes her head and strides to the sideboard, pouring herself a too-full glass of vodka, neat. She gulps once, twice, and grimaces at the burn. “It was supposed to be a sure thing.”

I don’t move, don’t speak. Finally, after months of asking, of running, of fighting, she’s about to explain. If I flinch, she might spook. If I speak, she might decide she’d much rather turn her ire on me than own up to her failures. That’s how it usually goes.

“Bet against the market and orchestrate the failure.” She knocks back the rest of her drink. “We would have come out with twenty times what we invested.”

“How much did we invest?” I ask.

“More than we could afford,” Father says bitterly.

Mother stares out the window, at the snow falling soft and slow and oblivious to the fiery destruction being wrought inside this room. “It was worth it. It should have been worth it.”