The air outside the law office tasted of exhaust fumes and the metallic tang of impending snow.

I took a deep breath, trying to clear the phantom taste of licorice and rot from the back of my throat.

It was a flavor I knew too well.

For three years, Lucia, Dante's mother, had brewed a thick, noxious sludge in her kitchen.

"Drink, Elena," she would command, her eyes as unyielding as granite. "This will open you up. This will make you fruitful."

I drank it.

Every single morning.

It made me gag as it slid down my throat.

Moments later, it made my stomach cramp until I was curled in a ball on the cold bathroom floor.

Dante would stand in the doorway, watching me heave.

He would offer me a peppermint afterwards, his hand idly stroking my hair.

"I'm sorry, baby," he would say. "But Ma knows best. We need a son."

He watched me poison myself for a lie.

I looked at his back now as he walked toward the waiting black SUV.

He was striding with purpose, his shoulders squared in that arrogant way of his.

He didn't care about the cramps.

He didn't care about the humiliation of the monthly fertility rituals where the village crones would poke and prod my stomach like I was livestock.

He only cared about the result.

And since I couldn't give him the result, I was nothing.

The wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my cheeks.

I remembered the day the doctor had slid the file across his mahogany desk.

Azoospermia.

Zero sperm count.

Dante was the sterile one.

I had burned the file in the bathroom sink that night, watching the truth turn to ash.

I had walked into the bedroom and told him that I was the problem.

I did it to save him from the mockery of the other Capos.

In our world, a man who cannot sire a child is seen as weak.

A weak Don is a dead Don.

I had saved his life with that lie.

And this was how he repaid me.

"Elena, move it," Dante called out, holding the car door open.

He looked annoyed.

He looked like a man who was inconvenienced by the chore of taking out the trash, not the disposal of his wife.

I walked toward him.

I didn't run.

I didn't cry.

I just walked, letting the bitter taste in my mouth turn into fuel.

He thought he was discarding a broken vessel.

He had no idea he was lighting the fuse on a living, breathing bomb.

I stepped into the cold marble lobby of the building where the clerk's office was located.

And then I saw her.

Lola.

She was sitting on a velvet bench, idly scrolling through her phone.

She was wearing a tight white dress that strained against her skin, looking utterly cheap beneath the expensive cashmere coat I knew Dante had bought her.

But even the coat couldn't hide the mound of her belly.

She was massive.

Seven months, at least.

My stomach dropped, a physical sensation of falling into an abyss.

It wasn't just that he cheated.

It was the timeline.

He had been with her while I was still drowning in the mud, doing his dirty work.

He had been with her while I was managing his legitimate shipping business, securing contracts with the Russians to keep his territory safe.

Lola looked up and saw us.

A smile spread across her face, predatory and smug.

"Dante!" she squealed, struggling to stand up.

Dante rushed past me.

He moved faster than I had seen him move in years.

He was at her side in seconds, his hands hovering over her stomach as if it were made of spun gold.

"Did you wait long, *tesoro*?" he asked, his voice dripping with a tenderness I hadn't heard since our honeymoon.

"No, baby," she said, leaning into him. "Is it done? Is the witch gone?"

She didn't whisper.

She looked right at me over his shoulder.

Her eyes were dark and empty, like a shark's.

She was just a club dancer he had picked up at The Emerald Room.

She had no class, no education, and no loyalty.

But she had a womb that worked.

Or so he thought.

Dante didn't correct her.

He didn't defend me.

He just kissed her forehead.

"Yes," he said. "It's done. We just need to sign the new papers."

He was trading a queen for a pawn because the pawn was pregnant.

I stood there, feeling the cold marble floor seeping through the soles of my shoes.

I watched them.

The happy couple.

The miracle baby.

The lie.

I felt a laugh bubbling up in my chest, acidic and sharp.

It wasn't a laugh of joy.

It was the sound of a weapon being loaded.