I have never been good at pretending not to notice when someone is manipulating me. When I was fourteen, a girl in my math class slipped a cheat sheet onto my desk as the teacher walked down our row. “Hold this for me,” she whispered. “Just until the test is over.” She expected me to hide it. Instead, I raised my hand. “Ms. Carter, Jenna put her cheat sheet on my desk and asked me to keep it for her.” No one at school ever asked me to “hold” something for them again. Then Lorenzo Moretti, Don of one of New York’s oldest families, found me and told me I was the daughter he’d lost twenty-five years ago. He held a dinner to introduce me to the family. Before I arrived, Sofia—the daughter they had raised—hid my place card and took the seat between my parents. “I’ve sat here for twenty-one years,” she said sweetly. “You don’t mind, do you?” Everyone expected me to smile, sit somewhere else, and prove I wasn’t a threat. I put my place card back on the table. “If this seat means nothing, why did you need mine?” Sofia cried. My mother rushed to comfort her, my three brothers followed her out, and my father lectured me about keeping the peace. It wasn’t the first time. They had missed three of my birthdays for Sofia, given her the bracelet engraved with my name, and turned the rooms promised to me into her private studio. Every broken promise came with a reasonable excuse, but every excuse ended the same way: Sofia came first, and I was expected to understand. They all believed I would tolerate anything for the Moretti name, their money, and their protection. The next morning, they abandoned me at the courthouse during my name-change appointment because Sofia claimed she couldn’t breathe. So I withdrew the petition, kept the name my adoptive mother gave me, and moved out with one suitcase. But after I left, why did every one of them regret it?
