Chapter 61: Rare Skills
The balcony stone was cool beneath her bare feet, a sharp contrast to the dry, warm night air. Beth leaned against the wrought-iron railing, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers. She took a long drag, letting the nicotine buzz clear the static in her head. It was a habit she’d mostly kicked, but tonight, she needed the chemical calm.Donna.
The word echoed, a seismic title she hadn’t asked for. From the balcony, she could see the dark silhouette of the old oak, a sentinel in the moon-washed field. That’s where it had truly started to fracture, a lifetime ago.But her mind drifted further back, to a different coast, a different life.
She remembered the heavy, ornate door of the Rossi family home in Brooklyn, the smell of simmering gravy and espresso beans. Damien, young and impossibly vibrant, his hand squeezing hers too tight.“They’re gonna love you,” he’d whispered, all confidence.
They hadn’t.Not really.
His mother, Sofia, had been polite, a careful warmth that didn’t reach her eyes. His father, Vittorio, had assessed her over the rim of his wine glass, his gaze as calculating as any boardroom adversary. But it was his sister, Clair, who’d been the clearest. She’d cornered Beth in the sprawling kitchen, sotto voce, while the men talked in the other room.
“You’re beautiful, Bethany,” Clair had said, chopping basil with sharp, precise strokes.“My brother is obviously smitten. But you should understand something.”
Beth, trying to be gracious, had smiled. “I’m listening.”
“You marry a Don, that makes you his wife.Protected. Spoiled, even.” Clair didn’t look up from her knife.“But you’re outside.Attached only by law. A responsibility, not a partner.A Don’s wife gets respect.A Donna commands it. A Donna is family. A Donna… well, disrespecting a Don’s wife might get you hurt. Disrespect a Donna, and you don’t wake up the next morning.” Finally, Clair’s dark eyes had flicked to hers.“That distinction?It’s everything. And it’s not something you get just by saying ‘I do.’”
She’d felt like a specimen under glass.An outsider forever. That night had cemented a cold, hard truth: in Damien’s world, she would always be an accessory. It had fueled her exit, her fierce, independent climb. She built her own empire so no one could ever make her feel like a guest in her own life again.Vega had called her “Donna” at the border. She’d dismissed it then as the flattery of a manipulative man who saw a trophy.
But Damien…
They’d been back in each other’s orbit for less than three weeks. A chaotic, brutal, passionate blur.He’d said ‘home’ was anywhere they were together. He’d looked at her last night with a reverence that shook her.Was he thinking it? Was he, in that ruthless, old-world mind of his, already slotting her into that sacred, terrifying category?Or was it just another line, another part of the seduction?
The sliding glass door behind her whispered open.She didn’t turn. She felt his presence before she saw him, a change in the air, a shift in the shadows.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Damien’s voice was sleep-rough.He came to stand beside her, his shoulder almost touching hers. He was shirtless, a pair of low-slung sweatpants hanging from his hips. In the moonlight, the scars on his torso were silver lines, a map of a life she’d only partly known.“Thinking,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke into the darkness.
“Dangerous pastime.” He nodded toward the cigarette. “I thought you quit.”
“I did. Tonight, I un-quit.”
He was silent for a moment, watching the glow of the ember.“Vega’s logistics.My guys are ready to move on your word. We can synchronize.”
“It’s not about Vega right now.” The admission surprised her. She’d been single-minded for days.
He turned to face her, leaning his hip against the railing. “Then what’s it about?”
She took one last drag and stubbed the cigarette out on a stone planter.“Your sister.”
A subtle tension tightened his shoulders.“Clair? What about her?”
“She once gave me a lecture in your mother’s kitchen. About the difference between a wife and a Donna.” Beth finally looked at him, searching his face for any hint of deception.“It was her way of telling me I’d never be family. That I’d always be on the other side of the glass.”
Damien’s expression darkened. “Clair has a big mouth and outdated ideas.”
“Are they outdated, Damien?” She crossed her arms, a defensive gesture she immediately regretted. “When you introduced me to your father, to your uncles… I was the pretty civilian you’d dragged in.A potential liability. A weakness to be managed.That’s what they saw. That’s what I felt.”
He pushed off the railing, closing the small distance between them. His hands came up, not to hold her, but to frame the space around her face, forcing her focus onto him.“Listen to me. That was then.You were different.I was different. A arrogant kid who thought the world was his to give.”
“And now?”
“Now?” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Now you have a network my people can’t fully map. You stared down a cartel boss on your own land and made him blink. You’re planning a military-grade disruption of a multi-billion dollar operation from your goddamn study.” His thumbs brushed her cheekbones, a soft counterpoint to his intense gaze. “Beth, you walked out of that life and built a kingdom. And then you walked back into the fire, not as my accessory, but as my….” He struggled for the word.“Ally?” she supplied, her voice barely a whisper.
“No.” The word was definitive.“As my equal.In every way that matters. The world I come from, it’s slow to change.But it recognizes power.It respects iron. You think my father, my uncles, anyone in that life would look at you now and see a ‘civilian’?They see a force.They see a Donna. Not because you’re with me. Because of who you are.”
The air left her lungs in a rush.There it was.Not a suggestion, not a hope.A statement of fact.
“Is that what you want?” she asked.“To make me that? To bring me fully into that… world?”
“I want you next to me,” he said, his voice dropping low. “The ‘world’ is just geography.The rules are just… rules. We can burn them down and write new ones.Together.But yes.I want you ruling, not just presiding. I want them to look at you and know that touching you isn’t just a slight against me. It’s a death sentence they pronounced on themselves.” He swallowed, the vulnerability stark on his face. “But only if you want it.The title, the danger, all of it. The choice has to be yours.”
She thought of the fear, the constant calculus of safety. She thought of the cold, dismissive gaze of his family. Then she thought of the raw, unfiltered power she’d felt holding Vega’s operations in her hands, of Damien looking at her not as a prize to be won back, but as a partner to be reckoned with.
The buzz from the cigarette was gone.In its place was a clearer, sharper hum—the hum of potential.
She reached up, her fingers closing around his wrists.She didn’t pull his hands away. She held them there, an anchor.“Vega first,” she said, echoing their pact from the night before. But her voice was different now.Steadier.“Then we’ll talk about the rules. And who gets to make them.”
A slow, real smile touched his lips.It wasn’t triumph. It was relief. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers again, their shared silence a new agreement.The question wasn’t answered, but it had been asked. And for the first time, she was no longer afraid of the answer.
Down in the dark fields, a coyote yipped, a lonely sound. Up on the balcony, wrapped in the quiet and the moonlight, Beth Montgomery stopped feeling like a wife waiting for a role.
She began to feel like a queen surveying her domain.