They Hurt Her Loyal Dog for Fun, Thinking She Was Just a Weak Widow — Then They Discovered the Woman They Humiliated Was the Mafia Queen Who Ruled Them All

Chapter 8

“It’s so important that your daughter spend some time with Lucas,” Cyrus Venner was saying, all warmth and deference now, “to see if there’s real potential there.”

“Of course,” said Evelyn’s mother. “And our daughter marrying into your family would be the most important decision you’ll ever make. I’m sure you’ve heard about your very lucrative deal in the works—”

Cyrus glanced over his shoulder at the two women still standing in his foyer, and his patience snapped. “Are you still here? I thought I made myself clear. I’m entertaining important guests. It’s time for you both to leave.”

“Excuse me,” Mara said. She did not move. “Do we warrant an introduction?”

“No,” Cyrus said flatly. “You warrant the door.”

Evelyn Ashford examined Ruby with the clinical interest of a woman appraising a stain on a nice rug. “Oh, we go to school together. She must have followed me here. I’ve seen plenty of gold diggers like this. They always think that by marrying rich they can cheat fate.” She smiled, slow and poisonous. “But a duck is always a duck. She’ll never be a swan.”

“Evelyn is absolutely right,” Rosalie said. “These two are desperately scheming to climb the social ladder. But my Lucas is too smart for that nonsense. A graceful young lady like you, Evelyn — having you marry into our family would be an absolute honor.”

The Venners and the Ashfords stood together now, four people in one camp, and Ruby and Mara were the other camp — two women on the wrong side of a line drawn in marble. Evelyn’s mother looked at Ruby’s coat like it might carry lice. Cyrus had his phone out, checking something, already bored.

“It’s not true,” Ruby said, and her voice cracked. “I was never trying to marry rich. I’ve loved Lucas with all my heart—”

“Love?” Lucien’s laugh cut her off. “What’s that supposed to mean? Take the hint.”

“I heard you deliver food just to pay for your college tuition,” Evelyn said sweetly, tilting her head. “Why would Lucas ever bother with you? Really, I’m curious. What exactly did you think you had to offer?”

Ruby stood in the middle of the marble foyer, surrounded by people who had decided she was dirt, and said nothing. There was nothing left to say. The boy she’d loved for two years was watching her be torn apart in his own house, and he looked bored. He’d always looked bored. She just hadn’t been ready to see it.

Mara took her daughter’s arm. “We’re leaving.”

“Finally,” Cyrus said.

At the door, Mara Quinn turned back. The family was already drifting toward the sitting room, the Ashfords already being fussed over, Lucien already reaching for a drink. None of them looked up. They were done with her, the way you’re done with a plate you’ve scraped clean.

“That deal,” Mara said. Her voice was quiet, and it carried anyway. “I hope you enjoy it while it lasts. You treat it like your lifeline.”

Cyrus Venner didn’t even look at her. “Get out.”

Mara walked her daughter down the marble steps and out through the gates, and when the gates clanged shut behind them, Ruby finally broke — not a dramatic collapse, but a quiet, terrible sobbing that she’d been holding in for two years of “convenient.”

Mara held her on the sidewalk outside the Venner mansion, stroking her hair the way she had when Ruby was six and the world was too big. Cars hissed past on the wet street. The mansion’s windows burned gold above them, and in one of those windows a silhouette moved — Rosalie, drawing the curtains, dismissing them from her view. The gesture said it all: they had never been guests in that house. They had been an inconvenience, briefly tolerated, now disposed of.

“Mom,” Ruby wept against her shoulder, “he’s right. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. They’re all right.”

“No.” Mara’s voice was steel wrapped in silk. “They are wrong. Every one of them. And in two days, he’s going to regret every single word he said today.”

“Mama.” Ruby looked up at her, the word tiny and broken. “I gave him everything. Two years. I studied for him, cooked for him, believed him. And he was laughing at me the whole time. How do I ever trust anyone again?”

“You don’t trust the world, honey.” Mara cupped her daughter’s face. “You trust yourself. And you trust the people who’ve never made you beg to be loved.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruby pulled back, her face wet and baffled. “Mom, they have money, and power, and the Silver Wolves behind them. What could you possibly do to them?”

“Trust me, baby.” Mara looked past her daughter, at the gilded gates of the house that had just humiliated them both, and smiled the smile of a queen who had been underestimated one time too many. “Just trust me.”

Behind her, the lights of the Venner mansion burned bright and triumphant, certain of a future that had already been cancelled.

They just didn’t know it yet.