"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Colino's heir."
"And your blood contract?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."
She flashed a video on her phone. A dim back room of some social club. Piper draped across Colino's lap like a trophy.
He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.
"Do your best and bring the child into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Marconi territory. Everything."
Piper asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?"
Colino chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. I've been slipping birth control into her milk for months. She can't conceive. When the time comes, I'll just claim we adopted."
It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright.
So that was it.
Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind—too desperate to believe in the fairy tale—to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.