I had taken his care for love, when all along it had been an honor-killing dressed in tenderness. "Lorenzo, I don't like the taste tonight. Let me skip this one."

Lorenzo gave that helpless smile of his, the one that never once let me refuse. "Adriana, don't be stubborn. The physician said the more your body fights the food, the more it needs it."

"If you don't rest, the baby won't either. Aren't you the one who loves them most? Be good. For our baby. Here. Let me help you."

Half coaxing, half command, he pressed the rim of the glass to my lips. There was no room to refuse. There never was, in this house.

Lorenzo, were you so afraid my child would stand in Carmela's path? Or do you truly believe the only woman worthy of carrying your blood is her?

I closed my eyes in despair and drank the entire glass.

In less than half an hour, the poison took hold. I curled up on the bed in agony, drenched in cold sweat from the pain. Lorenzo had just finished his call to the Family's bought physician when he came back into our room. It was as if he'd been waiting outside the whole time.

Even after seven times before, losing my child again still felt like a knife twisting in my heart.

Through the haze, I caught the doctor's voice, low and careful, the way men in this house learned to speak. "Don Marchetti, your wife has lost far more blood than the other times. I'm afraid the damage is permanent. She'll never carry a child again."

Lorenzo said nothing. His eyes went red as he gathered me into his arms. "Adriana, don't worry. Even if we can never have children, I'll still love you. I'll take care of you for the rest of my life."

The Don who had been handed everything, who had men step aside when he crossed a room, now wiped the blood from my body with his own hands. He worried I'd take a chill after the miscarriage. So he held me close against him through the night, keeping me warm while I slept.

In the dead of night, deep in his sleep, Lorenzo murmured, "Carmela, don't be afraid. I'll see you get your happiness."

The tears I had held back for so long finally broke free. On the day of our blood-bound union, Lorenzo had promised me happiness. It was only a lie to keep me quiet, to keep me from standing in the way of Carmela's life.

In that moment, I understood. My whole marriage had been nothing but a joke.

I sent a message to my old friend in neutral territory, far beyond the Commission's reach:

[You once asked me to come see the world with you, remember? I've decided. I'll come to Lichtonia the day after tomorrow.]

I set the phone down. My lower abdomen still ached, deep and relentless.

The thought that I had just lost another child, and that the child's own father had taken it from me, left me breathless with pain. I locked myself in the bathroom and let the tears fall, replaying every moment I had shared with Lorenzo across these years.

When I stood, the phone slipped from my hand.

I bent to pick it up. That was when I saw it, tucked under the basin. A small bundle, wrapped with care in layer upon layer of expensive satin.

I unwrapped it, and found a thick photo album. An album filled with pictures of Carmela. From the age of fifteen to her now twenty-eight.

The design on the cover was familiar. I had seen it before, in Lorenzo's study. He had always loved photography.

Though Lorenzo was Matteo's younger cousin, he was only a few years older than the rest of us. When we were children, Lorenzo would watch Matteo and me squabble over some small thing, his face distant, as if such childish games were beneath a boy of his blood.

One day, when Carmela had just turned fifteen, she came to me and asked if we could be friends. I thought nothing of it. She was always alone, so I introduced her to Matteo and Lorenzo.

It was around then that Lorenzo began joining us. He even took up photography.

I thought it was only a sign of him growing up. The truth was, he had found someone he wanted.

The photos in that album. I had seen only a few of them. The rest I had never seen at all, not even back then.

Every smile, every frown, every glance and every fleeting gesture. Lorenzo's lens had captured Carmela's every movement, frame after frame, like a man cataloging something sacred.

After the day we were bound together in the alliance union, Lorenzo had never picked up that camera again.

Once, I asked him to take a portrait of me carrying his child. He told me, simply, that the camera was lost, and arranged for one of the Family's photographers to do the work instead.

The truth was he hadn't lost anything. His lens was reserved for one woman alone, and I had never been her.

I slid the album back into its hiding place, my eyes completely dried up. I had no more tears to waste on him.

On my phone I booked a seat on a flight bound for neutral territory, somewhere far beyond the Commission's long reach. Then I drafted the papers of severance from the Family. If he wanted Carmela that badly, let him have her.

The next morning my eyes were so swollen they looked like walnuts.

Lorenzo noticed, and something in him seemed to soften into worry. Unlike any other day, he made breakfast himself, in a kitchen that smelled faintly of garlic from last night's Sunday meal. He boiled an egg and peeled it with careful hands, then pressed it gently against my swollen eyes to bring down the swelling.

His tenderness was so convincing that for a moment I almost believed last night had been nothing more than a bad dream.

But the hollow ache in my belly held me firmly to the truth.

Lorenzo sighed when he saw I hadn't touched a single spoonful of the porridge he'd made.

"Adriana, we just lost our baby. I know you're heartbroken, and I'm hurting too, but you have to take care of yourself. After everything your body's been through, you can't keep going like this. Please eat something, for my sake. Don't make me worry, all right?"

"Where is my baby's body? I want to see him."

Three months. By then my child would have already taken shape. I would never hold him. I would never even see his face.

Lorenzo's answer was the same as it had been the seven times before. "I made certain the baby was properly buried. You're too distraught right now, cara. I won't have you breaking your heart further over a grave."

"My parents are grieving too. Come to the family estate tonight for dinner. It'll do all of us good to be together."

The moment I stepped through the iron gates of the Marchetti estate, I saw Carmela draped on Matteo's arm, every gesture of hers dripping with playful flirtation.

When she noticed me, she tilted her head and pushed her belly forward with a slow, deliberate pride, as if displaying a trophy.

"Oh, Adriana! It's been ages. Come, sit. I heard you lost another little one. You really must be careful not to overexert that fragile body of yours."

Ever since the wedding, things had sat tense and cold between me and the two of them. Whenever I came to the estate, I arranged my visits for the hours I knew they'd be elsewhere.

Today the luck wasn't with me.

I looked at Carmela's six-month belly and felt a sharp pang in my chest. She carried Lorenzo's child. And that man had never once let a pregnancy of mine survive past three months.

When Donna, Lorenzo's mother, saw me, her face curdled.

"Useless. You can't even keep a child alive in your own womb. How many times now? And still you have the nerve to look tired? How my son ended up bound to a woman like you, God only knows."

Donna was Lorenzo's blood mother and Matteo's stepmother both. At fifty, she had watched the rule of the Family that should have passed to her own son slip instead into Matteo's hands. The wound of it had never closed.

Once, Lorenzo would have stood between his mother and me. Now his eyes rested only on Carmela, full of longing and devotion, blind to the tension drawn tight as wire across the room.

"Donna, please don't trouble yourself," Carmela said sweetly, her voice thick with false concern. "It's only that Adriana wasn't blessed with the fortune to be a mother. After losing so many, it isn't as though she wished it on herself."

Donna scoffed, her fingers rising to roll the crucifix at her throat between them. "She is a cursed woman. Nothing more. Dragging my son down with her into ruin."

Pretending to make peace, Carmela moved to guide me toward a chair. As she rose, she let herself stumble.

She caught her balance at once, but Lorenzo didn't wait to see it. He shoved me aside and crossed the room to her.

Ignoring every other soul in the place, he pulled Carmela into his arms and asked, low and anxious, "Carmela, are you all right? You're carrying. Why are you on your feet alone? Where is Matteo?"

Carmela gave a honeyed smile. "Matteo's away on Family business across the water. He's about to take his seat as underboss, so the work's been swallowing him whole."

She cut me a mocking glance before she turned back to Lorenzo, arranging her face into an expression so painfully, cloyingly sweet it set my teeth on edge.

“Lorenzo, I think I twisted my ankle just now. It hurts so much,” Carmela said, all pouty, one hand pressed to the swell of her belly.

Lorenzo didn’t say a word. He simply swept Carmela up into his arms and carried her toward the upstairs bedroom, not even sparing me a glance. The soldiers stationed at the foot of the staircase stepped aside without a sound, eyes lowered, as a man does when the Don has chosen his path and no one is foolish enough to stand in it.

Meanwhile, Donna shot me a pointed look. Her fingers found the crucifix at her throat and began to roll it slowly between them.

“Not only can you not give this Family a son, you can’t even keep your own husband. If Matteo hadn’t taken Carmela first, do you think my Lorenzo would have ever looked at you? And you have the nerve to eat at my table. Get upstairs. You ruin my appetite just by breathing the same air,” she said, her voice dripping with cold sarcasm, the cross still turning under her thumb like a curse said as a prayer.

I had always known Donna despised me.

She saw me as the woman the underboss had passed over, the one who had clung to her son and made him a laughingstock in front of the whole Family. After eight engineered losses, her contempt had only sharpened into something with an edge.

Because she was Lorenzo’s mother, I tried to tell myself the fault was mine for failing to carry a child. I felt the guilt of it, especially in the days when Lorenzo would step between us and shield me from her tongue.

I endured it all.

Tonight, though, Lorenzo was so consumed by Carmela that he seemed to have forgotten I existed at all.

For a brief moment, I considered laying the truth bare across that table. I pushed the thought down as quickly as it rose.

I had already decided to break from this Family and run. So what was the point of saying anything?

I went upstairs in silence and noticed Carmela’s bedroom door standing slightly ajar.

Something pulled me toward it.

What I saw made my heart freeze. Carmela, her clothes pulled askew, lay on the bed with Lorenzo above her.

“Lorenzo, you’re still the one who looks after me best. Matteo can’t give you an heir, and if you let Adriana carry your son, he loses the bloodline. If that happens... I don’t know how much suffering they’ll put me through.”

Lorenzo’s breath broke between movements, his eyes gone dark with want. “Is Matteo good to you? Has he raised a hand to you?”

“Since the pregnancy he treats me like I’m made of glass. Terrified I’ll tire myself. He washes my feet with his own hands. He’s gentler with me than ever.”

Lorenzo’s expression turned faintly bitter. “As long as he’s good to you... as long as you’re happy... I have no regrets.”

“Lorenzo, you’ve given up so much for me. I couldn’t be your wife, but I can give you this. Tonight, I’m yours.”

Lorenzo could hold himself back no longer, and the two of them came together harder, the bed frame knocking against the wall.

I never knew that the cold, controlled Don, the man whose stillness silenced rooms, could lose himself like this.

Tears fell as I stumbled back to my own bedroom. My thumb found the bare ring finger and pressed against it, reaching for a band that no longer sat there.

Lorenzo didn’t come back the whole night.

The next morning, Lorenzo looked at me with eyes full of guilt. He smoothed the lapel of his jacket with one slow pass of his hand.

“Adriana, I meant to come back to you last night. My mother kept me until dawn, going on and on. I just... couldn’t get free.”

I didn’t name the lie. I only turned toward the door to wait for him.

A bucket of kitchen scraps came down over me without warning, and Carmela stepped in front of me, the slop pail still in her hands, a mocking smile on her mouth.

“Adriana, did you enjoy the show? Watching Lorenzo come undone over me?” The corner of her mouth lifted a half-second too early, a flicker of triumph she couldn’t quite swallow.

So she had left the door open on purpose.

“Losing a child doesn’t feel good, does it? But you won’t have to worry about that anymore. You’ll never carry one again.”

“If you ever found the nerve to get pregnant again, I’d make you understand the consequences. You will not take my place as the Don’s true woman.”

“For me, Lorenzo didn’t just give up the bloodline to Matteo. He helped me carry this child. And those babies you lost? They became my... supplements.”

My head snapped up, my voice shaking. “What did you just say?”

Carmela laughed softly. “What? Did you never wonder why, every time you lost one, Lorenzo told you the child was already buried, that you couldn’t see it? Because I told him to keep it from you. Consuming them... it’s good for my health.”

Despair, rage, and disbelief hit me all at once.

So that was why Lorenzo never let me see my children.

How could he?

Everything that happened... all of it... was for Carmela?