Page 36 of False Heir

She snorted a laugh, the sound breaking through the tension like a breath of fresh air. "I'd pay to see that," she said.

We walked on in comfortable silence, both lost in our thoughts and the sounds of the night. I knew we'd have to return to reality soon, but for these few moments, it felt like it was just Carmen and me again, before the Callahans, before the mafia life had defined us.

"I know our lives have taken turns we never planned for, Carm," I began, wringing my hands together. My gaze rested on the twinkling stars overhead. "I haven't exactly been the best sister and..."

"No," she cut me off, her voice surprisingly gentle. "Don’t do that. It’s not your fault. You’ve always looked out for me. You got the raw end of this deal. You’re just lucky you fell in love with him.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I said.

“And maybe,” Carmen continued, a sardonic twist to her lips, “who knows? Maybe he’ll turn out to be a good guy. Stranger things have happened.”

I laughed then, a short burst of sound that echoed in the quiet night. "You really believe that?"

“I don’t know,” she admitted, tugging at the loose ends of her blazer in an unusual display of uncertainty. "But I've seen the way he looks at you, Adriana. Tristan’s got it bad."

A pang of something—affection, perhaps even hope—echoed in my chest at her words.

"Yeah," I murmured, absentmindedly rubbing my bump. "Maybe. But Tristan isn't just any guy—he's a Callahan."

“And you’re an Orsini.” Carmen countered, an unmistakable edge to her voice. “Don’t forget that. We’re not pushovers.”

“About that,” I said. “We need to talk about Dad.”

She nodded, looking ahead, her hands in the pockets of her blazer. “Yeah, we do.”

"I’m afraid he’s losing it, Carm," I said without preamble, the night air carrying my words away as if they were dangerous to hold onto for too long. "His patience is wearing thin, and I can't shake the feeling that he's about to do something drastic."

Carmen let out a breath, her gaze fixed on the path ahead. "You're not wrong. Mom’s been trying to rein him in, keep his temper from boiling over. But it's like holding back a storm with your hands—eventually, the dam's going to break."

"Is there anything we can do?" I asked, though a part of me dreaded the answer. If dad was teetering on the edge, it would take more than just careful words to pull him back.

"Mother's doing what she can. She's got that way about her, you know? Always smoothing over the cracks before they can turn into canyons. And she’s obviously super invested in making sure nothing happens to you. But…” Carmen's voice held a note of admiration, but it was laced with something darker, something akin to resignation.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whose side Mom is on,” she said. “Except her own.”

I nodded, my mind spinning with unsaid thoughts and fears. Silvio's impatience wasn't new, but the intensity of it—that was what worried me. A cornered animal was dangerous, but a cornered kingpin? That was catastrophic.

“Mom would never hurt us.”

“Neither would Dad. And yet here we are, talking about how unhinged he’s been acting,” she said. “The fact that he would never physically hurt us doesn’t mean shit when the stakes are this high.”

I sighed. She was probably right. "I just hope she can hold him together," I murmured, my heart clenching at the thought of everything—and everyone—that could be caught in the crossfire of dad’s breaking point.

"Hope might be all we have left," Carmen replied, her sharp profile softened by the moonlight. "But hope doesn't bulletproof the windows, Adriana."

And in that moment, with the weight of our family's legacy pressing down on us, I felt the cold grip of fear tighten around my heart.

“You don’t think he’d literally shoot at us, do you?” I asked.

“I didn’t think so before, but now, honestly, I have no idea what he would do…” she said, then trailed off, craning her neck to look behind us.

“What?”

Her gaze was locked on something over my shoulder, her body tensing subtly beside me.

I didn't need to look back to know what—or who—had caught her attention. The familiar prickle of being watched had been our shadow as much as the ones cast by the streetlights. I turned my head just enough to confirm our suspicions: two men in nondescript suits were trying too hard to blend into the scenery, their eyes trained on us with an intensity that didn’t quite match the casual strollers one would expect at this time of night.

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