A Crown of Silent Vows

Phoebe

“Are you even listening to me?” Marco hisses, his voice a low grate that barely disturbs the funereal quiet of the room. “Fix your face. You look weak.”

I keep my eyes fixed on the polished mahogany of my father’s casket. The scent of lilies and formaldehyde is so thick I can taste it. Weak. If he only knew. I am a pillar of salt, a statue carved from ice. One wrong move and I might shatter, but I will not melt. I will not cry.

“I’m mourning, Marco,” I say, my voice a perfect, measured whisper. “It’s what people do at funerals.”

“We are not people,” he snaps. He gestures vaguely at the gold-leaf trim on the ceiling, the velvet ropes, the armed men standing like statues by every door. “We are Sterlings. And the new head of this family needs his sister to look like a princess, not a peasant.”

I finally turn my head to look at him. My older brother. He wears our father’s signet ring, but it looks like a toy on his finger. His suit is tailored to perfection, trying to add breadth to shoulders that are not broad enough to carry the weight he now thinks he owns. He is all bluster and cheap cologne, a hollow imitation of a powerful man. He projects authority the way a child wears his father’s shoes: clumsily, and with the constant fear of tripping.

“And the new head of this family,” I reply, my voice dropping even lower, “should be more concerned with the vipers in this room than with my expression.”

His jaw tightens. A flash of anger, predictable and impotent, crosses his face before he smooths it over with a smirk. “Always the clever one, aren’t you, Phoebe? Don’t worry your pretty little head about the vipers. I have them under control.”

I almost laugh. He has nothing under control. I can see it in the way Uncle Matteo keeps glancing at the door, his hand never straying far from the bulge under his jacket. I can see it in the nervous sweat on Gianni’s brow, a capo who controls the docks and probably thinks he should be the one wearing that ring. Marco sees a room of loyal soldiers. I see a room full of wolves, circling, smelling the blood in the water. My father is gone. The king is dead. And the prince is a fool.

“Of course you do,” I murmur, turning back to the casket. The conversation is over. He has postured, and I have dismissed him. It is a dance we have perfected over two decades.

The heavy oak doors at the back of the parlor swing open. A hush falls over the room so suddenly it feels like the air has been stolen from my lungs. Every capo, every soldier, every cousin turns. Marco straightens his tie, a nervous tick he thinks makes him look commanding.

It doesn’t.

Isaac Lorne walks in. He walks in as if he owns the ground beneath his feet, as if this is his victory celebration, not our family’s darkest day. He is young, my age perhaps, but he moves with the chilling certainty of a man who has never known doubt. Dark hair, eyes that miss nothing, and a suit so black it seems to absorb the light around him. He is flanked by only two men, a quiet declaration of power. I do not need an army to walk into the lion’s den.

The feud between the Sterlings and the Lornes is a story written in blood on the city’s streets. His father killed my uncle. My father, in return, took his. This bloody cycle has been our entire lives. And now, Isaac, the new Don of the Lorne family, has the gall to stand in our funeral home, before the body of the man he considered his greatest enemy.

Marco takes a step forward, his chest puffed out. “What are you doing here, Lorne?”

Isaac’s eyes drift past my brother as if he is nothing more than a piece of furniture. They land on me. For a second, a single beat of a hummingbird’s wing, our gazes lock. I expect to see hatred, or triumph. Instead, I see… something else. An assessment. A cold, calculating intelligence that mirrors my own. I see a flicker of defiance in his gaze, a challenge. I am the only person in this room he seems to truly see.

He gives a slight, almost imperceptible nod in my direction before addressing the room at large. His voice is calm, smooth. “I came to pay my respects. Enzo Sterling was a great man. A worthy adversary.”

Every word is a perfectly chosen insult wrapped in the guise of respect. He is marking his territory. He is telling every man in this room that the war is over because he has already won.

Marco’s face turns a shade of purple I find deeply satisfying. “Get out.”

“Marco,” a voice says. It is Uncle Matteo, his hand now resting on Marco’s arm. “He is a guest. We will show him the respect due.”

Matteo’s words are for everyone. They are a reminder of the old rules, the traditions my father held so dear. Even in war, there is etiquette. Isaac Lorne has made a bold move, a power play of the highest order. To throw him out would be a sign of weakness, of fear. Marco does not understand this. He only understands brute force and his own fragile ego.

Isaac walks slowly toward the casket. He does not look at my father. He looks at me again. His eyes trace the lines of my black dress, my face, my gloved hands clasped in front of me. I feel like a specimen under a microscope. I hold his gaze, refusing to be the first to look away. I will not give him the satisfaction. I will not show weakness. Not now, not ever.

He stops, dips his head in a gesture of finality, and turns. He walks out as silently as he came in. The room exhales as one. The tension bleeds away, replaced by a low, furious murmur.

Marco rounds on Matteo. “What was that? You let him disrespect our father’s memory!”

“He did not disrespect him, Marco,” Matteo says, his voice weary. “He put us on notice. He declared a new era. And you, you almost played right into his hands.”

My brother sputters, but he has no response. He stalks away to a corner to brood, surrounded by his sycophants who will tell him how strong he looked. I watch him go. This is how we lose. Not with a bang, but with the slow, steady rot of my brother’s incompetence.

Later, at the estate, the air is thick with cigar smoke and the clinking of whiskey glasses. The mood is dark. The soldiers are restless. Isaac Lorne’s appearance has shaken them, made them question the strength of their new leader.

The capos, the old guard who served my father for decades, are gathered in the library. They call it ‘the council.’ My father never allowed me in these meetings. ‘It is not a woman’s place,’ he would say. But tonight, Marco, in a rare moment of wanting to show me off like a prize, insisted I be there. He wants me to witness his power. He is too blind to see I am witnessing his failure.

I sit in a high-backed chair near the fireplace, silent, observing. They think I am merely decorative. A porcelain doll in a black dress. They do not know I spent my childhood listening at this very door. I know their secrets. I know Gianni skims from the ports. I know old Sal has a gambling problem. I know Marco’s right hand man, Leo, is feeding information to the press for pocket money. I know their weaknesses, their fears, their petty ambitions.

“The Lornes will strike soon,” Gianni says, his voice gravelly. “Isaac is not his father. He’s more aggressive. Smarter.”

“We strike first,” Marco declares, slamming his hand on the large oak desk. The gesture is so performative, so childish, I have to hide a smile behind my hand. “We show them that the Sterling family has not lost its teeth.”

Uncle Matteo sighs. He looks a hundred years old tonight. “A war now would be suicide, Marco. We are not ready. Your father’s death has left us exposed.”

“So we just wait for them to pick us off one by one?” Marco scoffs. “That is the talk of a coward.”

Matteo’s eyes flash with a dangerous light. “Watch your tongue, boy. I was a capo when you were still in diapers.”

An uncomfortable silence settles over the room. The challenge hangs in the air. Marco has overstepped. He has the title, but he does not have the respect. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

It is Sal, the oldest of them all, who finally speaks. His voice is thin and reedy, but it cuts through the tension like a razor. “There is another way. An old way. A way to guarantee peace.”

All eyes turn to him. Even Marco looks intrigued, desperate for a solution that does not involve him having to prove his mettle.

“An alliance,” Sal continues, his gaze sweeping the room before it lands, with a dreadful finality, on me. “A bond of blood and marriage. The Lornes have a new Don. We have a daughter of the family. A truce, sealed by a wedding.”

My blood runs cold. The room is utterly silent. I can hear the crackle of the fire, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. It feels like my own heart has stopped beating. They are talking about selling me. Selling me like a prize horse to our mortal enemy to prevent a war my brother is too weak to fight.

I look at Marco. He is staring at me, a strange look on his face. He is processing the idea. I can see the gears turning in his selfish, simple mind. No war. No risk to his own skin. He gets to keep the throne, and all it costs is his sister.

A slow, ugly smile spreads across his face. He lets out a short, sharp laugh.

“Well, Phoebe,” he says, his voice dripping with condescending amusement. He leans back in our father’s chair, spreading his arms wide as if presenting the most brilliant idea in the world.

“Looks like you’re finally good for something.”

The words hit me harder than a physical blow. All my life, I have been dismissed. The quiet one. The smart girl who was good with books, but not with the family business. The pretty decoration to be seen and not heard. And now, my only value, my entire worth, is to be a sacrificial lamb. A peace treaty with a pretty face.

I feel a hot rage building in my chest, a fire that threatens to consume me. I want to scream. I want to throw the crystal glass on the table at my brother’s smug face. I want to tell these old men that I am worth more than all of them combined.

But I don’t. I do what I have always done. I swallow the rage. I push it down deep, letting it cool into something hard and sharp. Something I can use.

I look from Marco’s sneering face to Uncle Matteo’s resigned one, to Sal’s expectant gaze. They are all looking at me. The pawn. They think they are deciding my fate, moving me across the board to protect their king.

They have no idea. This is not a sentence. It is an opening. They are not putting me in a cage. They are sending a spy into the heart of the enemy’s camp. They see a marriage. I see a new chessboard.

I lift my chin, my spine straightening into a rod of steel. I let my gaze sweep over each of them, meeting their eyes one by one. I let them see the shift in me. The porcelain doll is gone. In her place is something else. Something they should have been afraid of all along.

My voice, when I finally speak, is calm and clear, without a single tremor.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll marry him.”