Roselle’s POV
“Mrs. Roselle, please, may we come in?”
A man’s voice came from the other side of the door.
I froze.
Who was it?
And what did they want from me now?
I had been hoping for some peace and quiet so I could properly think about what I was going to do next.
Unfortunately, it seemed that peace was becoming a luxury I could no longer afford.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to turn them away.
Curiosity got the better of me.
“Come in,” I said, remaining seated on the sofa.
The door opened, and three men walked into my room.
I immediately recognized all three of them.
The first was the older man who had approached me at the funeral and spoken to me before Mr. Silas arrived.
The second was the middle-aged man my daughter had been staring at earlier when I asked her if she was afraid.
The third was one of the men I had noticed sitting close to my husband’s corpse when I first entered the funeral hall.
They stopped a reasonable distance away from me.
“We would like to have a family discussion with you,” the oldest man said.
His eyes briefly moved toward Eva.
“So I suggest the maid excuses us.” His request wasn’t entirely unreasonable, considering he believed this was a private family matter.
But there was one problem.
I don’t have any good memories of men from my previous life.
And I certainly didn’t feel comfortable being left alone in a room with three unfamiliar men who clearly held some form of authority within this family.
“No. She stays.” The three men looked at me.
“Whatever you have to say, she probably already has an idea of what’s going on. This family has already fallen, so there is no point in continuing to uphold ridiculous rules or formalities.”
The shock on their faces was immediate.
Even Eva looked stunned.
Apparently, they hadn’t expected me to say that.
I didn’t bother correcting myself or pretending to be the Roselle they remembered.
At this point, maintaining the pretense was becoming more trouble than it was worth.
The older man quickly composed himself.
“We came to discuss your meeting with Mr. Silas tomorrow,” he said.
“We believe it would be best for us to go in your stead and negotiate with him regarding the future of this family.”
There it was.
That tone.
That subtle condescension men often used when speaking to me, especially when they had already decided in their minds that I was incapable of handling something important.
I leaned back against the sofa.
“So, what brought you to that conclusion?” I kept my voice calm.
One thing I had learned from dealing with men for years, particularly powerful men who were accustomed to getting their way, was that they often revealed themselves when you asked the right questions.
You didn’t have to challenge them directly.
You simply had to keep making them explain themselves.
The atmosphere in the room immediately shifted.
They hadn’t expected me to question their decision.
That alone told me something.
These men weren’t ordinary members of the family.
They were probably the elders.
And judging by the confidence with which they had walked into my room and attempted to make decisions on my behalf, they were clearly used to having their authority obeyed without question.
“We think it would be best to let the men of the family handle the discussion with Mr. Silas instead of you,” the middle-aged man, the same man who had approached me at the funeral said. You are reading on novelping(.)com, the official source.
I raised an eyebrow.
“The men of the family?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.
The third man finally spoke.
“Seeing as you know very little about the DeLuca family’s business, it would be best to let us, the elders of the family, handle the negotiation process.”
I stared at him.
I almost laughed.
So that was what this was about.
They didn’t think I was capable of handling the situation.
They didn’t even recognize me as someone who had the right to make decisions for this family.
Apparently, being the wife of the late Don wasn’t enough.
To them, I was simply a woman who knew nothing about the inner workings of the family and therefore needed men to make decisions on her behalf.
And they expected me to allow these same men, men who clearly didn’t respect me, to walk into Silas Belladonna’s home tomorrow and negotiate the future of my life?
More importantly, they wanted me to hand over control of my own future to them.
Absolutely not.
I had already woken up in a world I didn’t understand.
I had already lost the life I once knew.
I had already discovered that my supposed husband was dead, my family had been conquered, and I was now expected to marry the man responsible for taking everything from us.
I wasn’t about to surrender what little control I had left.
I looked at the three men one after another.
If they wanted to negotiate with Silas, they could do so on their own.
But they weren’t going to use me as an excuse to make decisions about my life.
“Which negotiations?” I tilted my head slightly.
“Last I heard, if a family or clan is conquered, everyone in that family becomes the property of the victor. Isn’t that the rule among all mafia families?” I paused, watching their expressions carefully.
“So, what other negotiations are there to be made?” I deliberately played dumb.
Not because I didn’t understand what they were trying to do, but because I wanted them to explain it themselves.
If they were going to walk into Silas Belladonna’s territory in my place, I needed to know exactly what they intended to negotiate.
“Usually, yes,” the elderly man replied.
“Your fate and that of the workers in this family have already been decided. But the members of this family are still here. Our fates haven’t been decided yet.”
He straightened slightly.
“We want to go ourselves and negotiate with him. Perhaps we can convince him to leave a few of the businesses in our hands.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“So, if I understand you correctly…” I began slowly.
“You want to meet a man who already has the reins of your lives firmly in his hands and beg him to spare you?”
None of them answered immediately.
I smiled faintly.
“And if I may ask, what about my life?”
Their expressions shifted.
“Does your negotiation include mine?” I leaned forward slightly.
“Oh, wait.” I didn’t give them a chance to answer.
“You already said it. My life has been decided because it is a known fact that, as the wife of the previous Don, I now belong to him.”
I looked from one man to another.
“But somehow, your lives which, according to the very rule you just explained, have also become his property, somehow haven’t been decided yet?”
Silence.
“So let me get this straight,” I continued.
“My life is apparently beyond negotiation, but yours suddenly isn’t?”
Their faces had gone stiff.
They had taken me for a fool.
Maybe they believed that because I was a woman, I would simply accept whatever decision they made and be grateful that they were willing to ‘help’ me.
They were wrong.
I might not know everything about this family yet, but I knew how to read between the lines.
And their intentions couldn’t have been clearer.
They weren’t trying to negotiate for the family.
They were trying to save themselves.
“Mama…”
A small, frightened voice suddenly came from the doorway, cutting through the tension in the room.
I turned toward it.
There she was.
Jasmine was peeking her head through the partially opened door, her little face filled with uncertainty.
“Mama, can I sleep with you tonight?” she asked softly.
“I’m scared.” The anger that had been building inside me slowly disappeared.
Just like that.
One look at her innocent, childlike face was enough to soften me.
“Jasmine, your mom is in a meeting right now,” Eva said gently as she moved toward her.
“Allow her.”
Eva stopped.
“Jasmine, come here,” I called softly.
The little girl immediately ran toward me.
She was dressed in adorable sleepwear, her hair slightly messy as though she had already been preparing for bed.
I still found it strange how naturally protective I felt toward her.
I didn’t know if it was because the Roselle whose life I had inherited had loved her so deeply, or if something inside me had simply accepted her as my own.
Either way, the moment she climbed onto my lap and rested her head against my chest, warmth spread through me.
I instinctively wrapped my arms around her, holding her close.
Then I remembered that the three men were still standing in the room.
I lifted my head and looked at them.
“I believe we’re done.” I didn’t wait for a response.
“Tomorrow, I will go to the Belladonna family estate myself.” My gaze moved from one man to the next.
“I will do my best to negotiate for everyone, the family, myself, and the workers.” I paused.
“Send a complete list of every business this family owns to Eva. She will bring it to me.”
I looked directly at the elderly man.
“I’ll go through everything tonight, and then I’ll come up with a plan before I meet Silas tomorrow.” I leaned back against the sofa, Jasmine still resting comfortably in my arms.
“You’re dismissed.” The words slipped out naturally.
The moment they left my mouth, I realized what I had just said.
You’re dismissed.
It sounded exactly like the way I used to dismiss my knights.
For a brief moment, I almost corrected myself.
But why should I?
The three men had already begun filing out of the room.
One by one, they left without another word.
I watched until the door finally closed behind the last man.
Only then did I look at Eva.
“Follow them and get the list.” My voice was firm.
“I want it tonight. Before I go to sleep.”
Eva nodded.
“Yes, Mrs. Roselle.” She turned to leave.