I Quit Being His Foolish Secretary and Became a Billionaire Heiress

This dress had been chosen so I could sit across a table from a sworn ally at a moment's notice. It was nothing like the cheap thing she made it sound. Besides, what kind of "arm-candy" burned through the night drafting arrangements until the shadows under her eyes wouldn't hide anymore? Seeing that Gianna wouldn't let it drop, Marco gave a resigned sigh. "Adriana, from tomorrow on, you'll wear slacks and a blazer when you handle Family business." I glanced past the shuttered window at the ninety-degree sun beating down on the street, and gave a flat nod. It would be a lie to say it didn't leave a bitter taste. When I was young, dazed with grief after my mother was buried, I had nearly gone into the water, and he was the one who pulled me out. So when it came time to learn the ropes before I took my place in the bloodline, I chose to come to his crew. Even though the Delgado name had already fallen on hard times back then, I still stood by Marco through it all and helped bring the operation back from the dead. We were boss and right hand, closest friends, kindred spirits. He'd even joked once that if neither of us was married by thirty, he'd throw me a grand wedding. I never took it seriously. But now, all at once, he didn't seem as remarkable as I remembered. Marco had invited a ranking Capo of the Valente Family to a gathering at an exclusive private social club. As the one who had pushed the arrangement forward, I was invited too. What I didn't expect was that Gianna would be there. She was dressed in a wildly out-of-place sailor outfit, pressed coyly against Marco's side. I was in the middle of laying out the terms of the arrangement, Marco nodding along in agreement. Gianna must have felt left out, because she let out a sugary little sigh. "Adriana, you're just so impressive, bringing my dear Marco such a rich arrangement." "You didn't happen to drink it into the bag one glass at a time with all the bosses, did you? Thank you for giving our crew so much." The moment the words left her mouth, the private room went dead silent. A soldier by the door shifted his weight and looked at nothing at all. I spoke evenly. "You're joking, Miss Russo. This arrangement moved forward because of Mr. Delgado's decisiveness, the resolve of the men at this table, and the plan my people put together." Gianna's smile turned suggestive. "Not that I'd know, but someone as capable as you, Adriana, must have gotten plenty in return." "You must hold your liquor well. Don't play coy. Go on, keep the bosses company for a few rounds." The filth came out of her without a shred of hesitation. This was no longer just childish. It was stupid. Marco's brow furrowed. "Gianna, stop making a scene." She stamped her foot playfully, picked up a glass of red, and held it out in front of me. "Marco, have you fallen for this little seductress? You defend her just so she doesn't have to have a few drinks!" And with that, she gave a deliberate flick of her wrist, and the wine in the glass spilled across my chest. The icy liquid soaked through the fabric in an instant, leaving the outline of my curves faintly visible. She let out a little gasp, the malice at the corners of her mouth barely contained. "Adriana, my hand slipped, I'm so sorry." "You're going to be pouring drinks in a bit anyway. Wet or not, it hardly matters. It'll just liven things up." Every word dripped with mockery and slander, cutting sharp, as if I were some fallen hostess who poured drinks at the club for a living. Everyone assumed Marco and I were something more than friends, something not quite lovers. But only I knew the truth. I truly regarded him as the one man I could trust with my back turned. When the crew's cash flow snapped, I'd stayed up night after night for months, drinking until my stomach bled to bring the tribute back in. And once, when the ground itself shook while I was away handling business in another territory, he'd fought against the fleeing crowd, ignoring his own safety, to find me in the ruins. Even my father, the old Don, was startled that someone as suspicious by nature as me could trust another person that completely. And now, from start to finish, he hadn't once stopped Gianna's cheap, tasteless behavior. I looked down at the mess spreading across my chest. I smoothed the wet fabric over my wrist once, slow and deliberate, and my eyes went cold. A few of the sworn allies at the table spoke up, trying to smooth things over.

"Miss Russo, that joke's gone too far. Signorina Moretti is one of the most valued allies this Family has, not some girl pouring drinks at the bar." "Delgado, seems like your people could use a little discipline." "Signorina Moretti is exactly the kind of talent we'd bleed to bring into our house and can't. You'd better treasure her, Delgado." The mockery Gianna had counted on never came. Instead, every made man at that table was affirming my worth, one voice after another, until the air in the private room seemed to close ranks against her. I lifted my gaze to Gianna and let out a soft laugh. "Since Miss Russo wants a drink, I'll be happy to keep her company." I signaled the waiter to bring two large tumblers and filled them to the brim with the good bottle, the reserve the club kept back for the men who mattered. When I swallowed a full glass of the high-proof stuff without so much as a flinch, Gianna's face went slack with shock. I pushed the other glass toward her. "I've finished mine. Miss Russo isn't scared, is she?" When I was three, I drained an entire bottle of the vintage Lafite my father kept cellared beneath the estate in the old country. A little liquor like this was nothing. Marco shot me a displeased look and lowered his voice, one hand drifting up to rub the back of his neck as he turned his eyes from mine. "Adriana, quit fooling around. Who in this whole territory can drink all night and never go under like you?" The moment the words left his mouth, I knew he was shielding Gianna. I set down the glass, nodded to the ranking men at the table, and said with perfect composure, "Excuse me a moment. I need to freshen up." But Gianna followed me in. "Adriana, you must hate me so much your teeth ache. You warmed Marco's bed all this time and still couldn't win his heart. All you're good for is some worn-out thing he uses to blow off steam!" Seeing that I couldn't be bothered to answer her, Gianna flew into a rage and lunged to shove me down. I dodged on instinct, twisting aside. She grabbed at empty air, and then her own hand swung up and slapped her across the face. I stood there dumbfounded, and let Gianna go running out, eyes brimming with tears. I knew this was bad. By the time I followed her back into the private room, she had already thrown herself into Marco's arms. "Marco, Signorina Moretti hit me." "I only went in there to apologize to her, and she called me the pretty little bird you keep, said I wasn't good enough for you." Marco froze, staring at me with pure shock and confusion. Around the table the men had gone quiet, glasses set down too carefully, every one of them reading the shift in the room. She wept, the picture of misery, while every word out of her mouth turned black into white. Marco's brow knit tight. Looking down at Gianna sobbing her heart out against his chest, he spoke, uncertain. "Adriana, what exactly happened here?" I let out a bitter laugh and sighed. "Delgado, do you actually believe such a clumsy little frame-up?" "There was more than the two of us in that restroom just now. Bianca Costa of the Costa house was there too. Why don't you go ask her?" Gianna's crying cut off in an instant. She laughed, a half-beat too fast, her fingers rising to touch the very cheek she'd struck, and beneath the powder her face had gone white. She pressed on, frantic. "Marco, a woman knows a woman best. She got close to you with bad intentions from the start!" "Adriana looks down on me. She wants to sit at your side as your wife, the Delgado woman." Her crying frayed Marco's nerves. He looked at me, weighing, and beneath it lay disappointment. "Gianna's still young, she doesn't know better. Even if she said something out of line, you had no business raising a hand to her." Back in the turf war, an enemy family had paid people to frame me before witnesses. Marco had stood at my side without a second's hesitation and said, flat and unshakable, that he would always believe me. Now I saw it clearly. Even a pact sworn under omertà couldn't hold against a man with his head clouded by a woman's perfume. Seeing me hold my silence, Marco chose to smooth it over anyway. His hand went to the back of his neck again, and he would not meet my eyes. He wrapped a soothing arm around Gianna's shoulders, his voice worn thin. "Adriana, it's a trivial thing. Did you really have to make such an ugly scene in front of the whole table?" "You answer to me. All the more reason to know your place, do your work, and stop entertaining these fantasies, coveting things that were never yours!" "This business ends here tonight. You'll have a written apology on my desk by morning!" With that, he turned and walked off, the still-sniffling Gianna tucked under his arm.

I stood where I was, watching their retreating backs, and let out a long, heavy breath. Lorenzo Valente, a ranking Capo of the Valente Family whom I knew well, pressed a glass of dark amaro into my hand, his meaning unmistakable. He tapped his signet ring twice against the edge of the bar before he spoke. "A talent like you, Signorina Moretti, shouldn't have to swallow accusations that carry no weight. There will always be a seat at the Valente table for you." For some reason, an image of Marco at twenty flashed before my eyes. A young man brimming with spirit, unflinching even as his crew teetered on the edge of being swallowed whole by stronger Families. His gaze had been resolute as he pointed toward the tallest tower standing over the territory. "Adriana, I swear I'll drag the Delgado name back to where every Family in the city has to look up at it." He'd done it. But somewhere along the way he'd become a stranger to me. He couldn't tell right from wrong anymore, and he'd lost the right to stand at my side. I took out my phone and sent my father a message. 【Sever the pact with the Delgado crew next week. I'll announce it myself, at the sit-down.】 The formal sit-down to seal the pact with the Valente Family was set in the Delgado social club, every camera and every witness turned toward the head of the room. I went over the order of things and every clause of the arrangement down to the last word, making certain nothing could slip. This was my last piece of work under Marco's roof. I would see it through to a clean finish. Marco and Gianna arrived together. Gianna was dressed to the teeth today, draped head to toe in couture, practically wearing the words lady of the house across her face. The ceremony moved smoothly, right up until the final step, when the sealed terms of the pact were to be thrown onto the wall for the witnesses to read. Gianna rushed to be the one working the projector. The next second, a string of filthy photographs flashed across the wall. The woman in them wore a face identical to mine, bare, tangled up with different men in obscene poses. The room went dead silent, then broke into an uproar. Somewhere behind me a glass was set down too hard. Gianna sobbed in feigned panic. "I pressed the wrong button, I swear. Adriana, I'm so sorry." "I had no idea you kept this many private pictures on your machine!" She looked like she was begging forgiveness, but she was smearing me, driving the lie deep, cementing it for every man in the room that those photos were mine. And then, at the very end, she put up a forged report. My name sat there in plain view, the diagnosis a disease too shameful to say aloud. Gianna drew a sharp breath. "Adriana, I'd been hearing whispers for a while that your bed was a filthy place, but I never dreamed it was true. You're not going to spread that sickness of yours through the whole city, are you?" She was using a gutter trick like this to burn my name to the ground, to strip me of the one thing that outlives cash in our world. Respect. The sheer humiliation of it swallowed me whole. His face like iron, Marco ordered an associate to kill the screen. But the muttering and the scornful stares around the room stabbed at me like knives. "Who knew Signorina Moretti was so wild behind closed doors. Fine figure on her too." "No wonder she rose so fast in the ranks. Turns out she had her own special methods." "Delgado and his whole crew, disgraced. She really is a slut who climbed on her back." The sit-down broke up in a hurry. I kept my back straight and walked to my office through the muttering. I didn't have much of my own here. Most of it was ledgers and work notes. Calmly, I packed it into a box. There was nothing left in this place worth holding onto. Then the office door swung open. Gianna strode in, chin tilted up in triumph. "Packing up to crawl out already? How does it feel, ruined and disgraced in front of everyone?" Her finger trailed across the award I kept on my desk. It was from the season Marco and I dragged the crew back from the brink, when we'd been named the ones to watch in the whole territory, the honor we'd earned together with our own hands. He'd insisted my name be cut into it beside his, saying half of it belonged to me. Gianna lifted the crystal, a vicious smile curling her lips. "You still keep this piece of trash? Don't tell me you're praying it'll soften my darling Marco with a little nostalgia." As she spoke, she made a show of raising it high to shatter it against the floor. My pupils shrank, and I stepped forward on instinct to stop her. "Put it down. Marco and I are nothing but old partners——" Instead she swung the crystal up and slammed it hard into my forehead. Pain tore through my temple, and warm blood blurred my vision in an instant. When Marco rushed in at the noise, Gianna was crumpled on the floor, wailing. Her hand fluttered up to her own cheek, and a laugh caught in her throat half a beat too fast before the tears came again. "Marco, Adriana said I made a fool of her, and she went crazy, tried to teach me a lesson with her own hands." Marco seemed not to see the ugly gash split across my head or the blood still running down my face. He rounded on me. His hand went to the back of his neck, and he rubbed it slow, his eyes sliding away from mine. "Adriana, what are you pulling now? Haven't you made enough of a spectacle today? You'll report to the back rooms tomorrow, scrubbing floors. It's about time you learned your place." "The Family isn't short on talent these days. Don't go thinking the whole thing falls apart without you." Even disappointment had gone numb in me. I smoothed the fabric over my wrist once, slow and deliberate, and my face was very calm as I spoke. "No need to trouble yourself, Don Delgado. I'm walking away. I wish you and Signorina Russo a long and happy life together." With that, I lifted the box and walked out of the house I'd poured five years into, without a single glance back. The one thing that had always set Marco and me apart was that I would never let some hollow, fleeting feeling get between me and the work. The next day was the sit-down where the Delgado crew and the Moretti Family were to announce their great alliance before every witness in the territory. A bandage at my temple, I arrived in a sharply cut suit. The moment Gianna saw me, she shrieked, "Adriana, how do you still have the nerve to show your face here? Come to beg Marco to take you back?" She waved at the enforcer beside her. "Throw this cut-loose little tramp out into the street. She has no right to breathe the same air as us." Just then my father came in, ringed by newsmen and the ranking men of the Family, and the room bent around him the way water bends around a stone. Conversations died. Men who had been lounging straightened where they stood. Gianna forced out a fawning smile on instinct. "Don Hart——" Before she could finish, under her stunned stare, my father smiled and held out his hand to me. "Let me present to all of you my daughter, Adriana. My blood-heir. She will be taking her place as head of the Moretti Syndicate."