Lorenzo's normally still eyes flickered with something close to panic.

"Gianna was beside herself over Sweetie, so I took her out to clear her head. She had a few too many, that's all—"

His tone softened a notch.

"Enough about that. I'll come with you to the next checkup with the Surgeon. You have my word."

There it was again.

A flimsy excuse to brush me off, then a little sweetener tossed my way, as if nothing had happened.

But Lorenzo, you'll never have to come to another checkup with me again.

"Don't bother. Let's sever the union."

Lorenzo went still for a beat, then his voice came low and cutting, humiliation curdling into anger.

"Adriana, do all you press people love blowing things out of proportion? I told you it was nothing. Do you have to make a sit-down out of it?"

"And what are you now? A clerk shuffling papers for the information network. You're about to turn thirty, carrying a child. Who else in this city would want you, besides me?"

"I'm out there cleaning up the Family's problems every single day, breaking my back for this name, not so I can come home and watch you throw a fit over nothing."

He turned for the door.

As he passed the entryway, his eye caught the corner of a document sticking out of my bag.

Death certificate. The two words were stark and unmistakable.

Lorenzo turned back, puzzled.

"Who died?"

He reached to pull it free for a better look.

Then his phone rang. Gianna's voice came through, choking helplessly on tears.

"Lorenzo, one of the puppies looks like it choked on its milk, and I've still got customers in the parlor. I can't handle it all."

"It won't die, will it? I'm so scared—"

His whole face tightened with worry.

"Don't cry. I'll be right there."

And with that, he was gone, no backward glance.

He even forgot to lock the study, the one room in the house he'd never liked me setting foot in.

Something pulled me inside, and then something under the desk stabbed at my eyes.

That year I was the most promising young reporter the network had, and I'd landed the assignment to draw out the old man who'd run the Family's clinic for thirty years. But the old man was proud and aloof, and he shut the door in my face.

After days of back-to-back nights, my blood sugar crashed and I fainted in the courtyard garden of the estate.

It was Lorenzo who picked me up. He told me the old fixer was stubborn, that once he'd made up his mind, nothing on God's earth would change it.

I dropped my head, dejected. The next second, an orange candy was tucked into my mouth.

Lorenzo gave me a playful wink.

"But I admire people who take their work seriously. So why don't you sit down with me instead?"

It was only later that I learned he was the youngest man ever made Underboss in the Marchetti Family. The Family's most trusted hand for the delicate problems no outsider could ever know about.

So many people had wanted an hour with this brilliant, dangerous star of the underworld and been turned away. He made an exception for me alone.

That was how Lorenzo and I came together.

Later, we both grew busier and busier, and Lorenzo looked at me, troubled.

"Adriana, I know earning your own name in the network is your dream."

"But there are elders in this house who can't be left without anyone to care for them. Could you step back from the work? I swear to you I'll be good to you the rest of my life."

And I knew just as well that becoming the finest fixer the Family had ever seen was his dream.

So I gave in.

I didn't walk away entirely. I moved to the quiet end of the network instead, shuffling logistics and paper. At least that way I could stay a little closer to the work I loved.

On so many sleepless nights, I'd run my fingers over my old press credentials in the lamplight.

Every time Lorenzo caught me at it, he was wracked with guilt, promising over and over that he'd be good to me.

But now, those credentials I'd treasured so dearly were being used to prop up the leg of his desk.

I opened his safe with Gianna's birthday.

On top sat a thick kraft paper envelope.

Inside were all kinds of photographs of the two of them.

Embracing. Kissing. Strolling hand in hand along a beach.

There were also receipts. The cash he'd put up to buy Gianna a house, to set up her business, to renovate the place.

Even though the kennel bled money month after month, laundered Family cash poured in to cover every shortfall, and he had to keep covering them himself.

The handwriting on the front of the envelope was Lorenzo's.

"I will clear every thorn from the path of your dreams."

I stared at that line for a long, long time.

Through my mind flashed these five years I'd spent inside the Marchetti walls, tending his parents, washing the linen, setting the Sunday table, keeping a made man's house in the order the famiglia expected.

I thought of the old colleagues I'd run into, the couriers still burning to chase a story, the ones who worked the night through over a dispatch nobody else dared to file, and the envy and the ache that had risen in me each time.

A laugh slipped out of me before I knew it.

So it turned out he knew how to protect someone's dreams too.

I photographed everything and put it all back exactly where it had been, every receipt squared to the edge of the safe. At last I made my decision.

"Hey, Carmela. I heard the network's been looking for someone to go embedded in the Old Country, into the smuggling routes, and no one's put their name down yet."

"If you'll have me, I'm willing to go."

Carmela went quiet for a moment. I heard the soft tap of her fingernail against the rim of a cup, twice, the way she always did before she said something that turned a life on its hinge. Then she said, delighted, "Of course. Back when you asked to step out of the network and marry into the Marchetti name, I thought it was such a waste. This is a rare chance. It's dangerous out there among the warlords, no question. But when you come back, no one in this business will ever speak your name the same way again."

"So get yourself ready. You'll move out in the next few days."

I set down the phone and started packing.

There was nothing left in this house I cared to hold on to.

Except for the sweater my mother knitted for me before she died. That, I was taking with me.

When I was little she'd knitted me plenty of things. Later I grew up, and she grew old, her eyes not what they used to be.

I didn't want her wearing herself out, so I told her to stop knitting.

After I got pregnant, I suddenly couldn't stand the cold.

And she secretly knitted me a sweater anyway, her eyes red and raw from staying up over it, waving it all off like it was nothing.

"Hand-knit's warmer. I picked out good yarn for it."

"You love the baby in your belly. Well, I love my baby too."

It made my heart ache and my chest swell, and I never had the heart to wear it.

But now, that sweater was gone.

I thought back to the scene when I'd gotten home, and I was about to call Lorenzo and ask.

Then I saw Gianna's new post.

"Hehe, I'd just been saying the babies were too cold now that they're newborns, and a certain someone went and brought over a sweater~"

"On the babies' behalf, thank you, Daddy~ And of course, this mama's remodeling skills are no joke either."

So Lorenzo had gone to celebrate those puppies' birthday with her.

In the photo, the two of them had their heads pressed together, their bodies tucked tight against each other.

Each of them cradled three puppies.

And I recognized it in a single glance.

The little "dog outfits" those puppies were wearing had been cut from the sweater my mother knitted for me.

When I pushed open the glass door of the kennel, the front Gianna ran with skimmed Family cash, I walked in just as Lorenzo and Gianna were eating cake off the same spoon.

Lorenzo had a severe revulsion for anything unclean.

At home his bowls and silver had to be scalded and stored apart from everyone else's, and at meals he always reached for the serving fork first.

Once, after I'd worked the house all day and was parched, my throat dry, I took a sip of water from his glass.

He hadn't said anything at the time. That night, the glass turned up in the trash.

Afterward Lorenzo explained it to me, said it was a habit the work bred in him, the same care a fixer takes with everything he touches.

So it depended on the person after all.

When she saw me, Gianna arched a brow and let out a soft, practiced laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear a half-second too fast.

"Oh, big sister Adriana's here? Lorenzo and I have been close since we were kids, never one to draw lines between what's his and mine. Don't take it the wrong way, now."

"Lorenzo, what did I tell you? There's no way she's going to dissolve the union."

"After all, a woman whose standing in this life came to nothing, who can only live on the tribute her husband hands her, what would she raise the children and keep her parents on if she walked away? See, she's chased you all the way here. Clings on awfully tight, doesn't she?"

"Sigh, compared to her, I suppose I'm just too thin-skinned. All I can do is honestly stay an independent woman who makes her own way~"

Lorenzo pinched her nose, doting.

"Fine, fine, you're the cleverest one. Always were a little sprite, even as a kid."

Then he looked over at me, the way you'd forgive a child who didn't know any better.

"Enough, Adriana. Since you came crawling here to smooth things over, I'll pretend I never heard the word divorce leave your mouth."

"Go home and put the apartment in order. These puppies were just whelped, things are still delicate, so I need to stay and keep an eye on them with Gianna a few more days."

Listening to the two of them stand there in that laundered little front of hers, I found it almost laughable.

One played the kept woman without an ounce of shame.

The other dressed up his dishonor as something noble, something a made man could be proud of.

I didn't waste breath on Lorenzo. I only gave a thin, mocking smile.

"Since Miss Russo is so resourceful, stealing another woman's husband apparently wasn't enough for her. She had to team up with my husband to steal my clothes too?"

"May I ask, this self-made woman of her own means, does that mean she made herself in the kept-woman trade?"

A few women picking through the grooming shelves nearby turned to stare at Gianna, startled.

"Wait, miss, so this handsome one isn't actually your man? But the two of you were eating off the same spoon. That's not exactly proper, is it?"

"Right. A minute ago I said you two made a darling couple and you didn't deny it. He's had a wife this whole time?"

Gianna let out a soft, practiced laugh and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, but the laugh came a half-second too fast, and there was nothing behind it. Her face had gone crimson, and she had no comeback.

Seeing her like that, the women curled their lips in disdain, set down the things they'd already chosen, and hurried out into the street.

The rims of Gianna's eyes went red. She turned to Lorenzo, the very picture of wronged innocence.

"Lorenzo, did Adriana come here on purpose to ruin my shop?"

"I only thought that sweater was warm and soft, perfect for the puppies. She's already spent so much of your money. What kind of clothes doesn't she own? Why would she smear me like this?"

"Those were some of my regular customers. How am I supposed to face them now? How am I supposed to run a business?"

Lorenzo wiped her tears away, aching for her, then turned and fixed me with a look that could have buried a man.

"Adriana, I took the sweater. What are you taking it out on Gianna for? It wasn't worth anything. When did you turn so petty?"

"You're only going to get bigger as the months go on, won't even be able to wear it. Just have your mother knit you another. Problem solved."

"It's not some treasure stitched by a world-famous hand. Why carry on like it's precious?"

Looking at that lofty expression of his, at the contempt sitting cold in his eyes.

I slapped him across the face, unable to hold it back, and the scream tore out of me.

"Yes, what my mother made is precious! Because she can never knit me anything again!"

"While you and your little childhood sweetheart were cooing over each other, while you'd sooner sit through her dog whelping than pick up my emergency call, my parents were already dead!"

Lorenzo's eyes flew wide, and his hands let go of Gianna on instinct.

"What did you say? How could your mother and father possibly—"

Before he could finish, Gianna shoved me hard.

"What gives you the right to put your hands on people?"

"It's just a ratty old sweater, isn't it? Like anyone wants the thing. Here. Take it back!"

She tore the sweater off the puppies and hurled it into the litter box the clerk was carrying toward the door.

"Going on about your parents dying. I ran into your aunt and uncle at the market just this morning!"

"I can't stand women like you, using a pregnancy to lie and play helpless, throwing fits, doing whatever it takes to bend your husband to your will. A parasite. You're a disgrace to every woman in this city."

The litter box hadn't been emptied yet.

Clumps of filth clung to the wool, giving off a foul stench.

My mother's love, in the end, was ruined past all recognition.

"I, I didn't mean to, I didn't know it was the boss's—"

The clerk, terrified by the bloodshot look in my eyes, stood frozen, at a loss.

Rage and hatred scorched my insides until everything burned. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my bare ring finger, the place a wedding band used to sit, pressing until it hurt, pressing until I was a breath from doing something there would be no walking back from.

I spun toward the one who had started all of it and raised my hand high.

Only the slap never landed on Gianna's face.

Lorenzo's hand cracked across mine first.

In the silent shop, it rang out sharp and clear.