Three hours before the wedding, my betrothed sent word that he would not be coming to collect me. Instead, he turned his car around and bound himself to Carmela Greco under the eyes of a priest, the alliance contract signed and sealed.

I sat through the murmurs of the gathered families, every whisper a small blade. Then the heir-apparent of the Falcone bloodline, Lorenzo Falcone, pushed open the doors of the hotel ballroom.

He came with the most extravagant convoy the territory had ever seen, black cars stretching down the street like a funeral procession for someone else's pride, and he laid before me one thousand and one roses. He confessed, in front of every made man and matriarch present, that he had loved me in silence for years, that marrying me had been his quietest prayer. Moved by it, by the way he had pulled me out of that humiliation while the whole room watched, I nodded and accepted him on the spot.

In three years of marriage, I lost seven children, and at last I carried again.

Lorenzo was overjoyed. He pulled me into his arms and turned me through a single slow step, as if we were dancing in an empty cathedral, and with all the tenderness in his voice he told me to rest. He swore he would treasure me and the child with his life.

At three months along, I overheard him speaking with the Family physician behind the study door.

"It's done, the same as before. The drug that empties a womb has been folded into her milk."

"I don't follow your reasoning. If Carmela can give you a son, why not let your wife carry one to term?"

Lorenzo laughed, low and without any joy in it.

"The Don's law is plain. Whichever of us sires an heir first inherits the seat. Matteo is barren, though he doesn't know it yet. If I already have my own blood ready to claim it, why should I let Carmela's son go without?"

So every word he had ever poured into my ear was a lie. If that was how it stood, then I would go.

……

"You understand what you're throwing away. Not only the seat at the head of the Family, but the family you might have built with your own wife. Seven children you could have raised at your own table."

"You've had me forge Matteo's bloodline records for years. He still has no idea he can't father a child. But if Carmela bears this one and it can never even call you father, is the whole bloody business worth it?"

Lorenzo's face shifted, something soft and grieving moving through his eyes.

"And what of it? They wouldn't let me marry Carmela back then. So I'll see to it she's happy every day she has left, and no one takes that from her. Not even the child Adriana and I will have together."

The physician hesitated, then lowered his voice to something close to warning. "But your wife has already lost seven. If she loses this one too, I don't believe she'll ever conceive again."

Lorenzo pressed his lips together. After a long silence he said, "It doesn't matter. I'll provide for her the rest of her life, whatever comes."

The veins rose on the back of my hand where I gripped the study door. I was so angry that my whole body trembled. I turned the plain band on my finger once, slowly, the way I always did when I was afraid and deciding to move.

Before he could sense me there, I slipped back to our bedroom and sank to the floor in a daze. All this time I had believed it was my own weak body that had cost me seven children in three years.

Falcone ago, the old Don had set the terms in front of the whole household. Whether it fell to Lorenzo or to Matteo, whichever heir produced a son first would inherit the seat and rise to the head of the Falcone Family.

After so many losses in so short a span, my health had crumbled. Yet I never let a complaint pass my lips. I only blamed myself, drowning in guilt, certain I was the stone tied to Lorenzo's ankle, dragging him down from everything he was meant to claim.

But in the end, all my pain and sorrow had been built on a lie.

Lorenzo had kept me from asking too much. He had insisted, every time we were together, that nothing come between us. He had always soothed me, always reassured me, and with each loss my body grew weaker, my health falling away piece by piece.

I understood now. To Lorenzo, my body and the seven children I had buried were nothing more than obstacles strewn across Carmela's road to happiness.

"Adriana, why are you sitting on the floor?" His voice broke through the silence as he came into the bedroom. He crossed to me at once and eased me to my feet, his face drawn with concern.

"It's nothing," I said quietly, forcing a thin smile. "Just a little sickness from the baby."

He rubbed my back, his touch light and careful. "Tesoro, you push yourself too hard. The next time you feel unwell, you call me. It cuts me to think of you suffering alone."

"You've barely slept since the pregnancy. Once this little one arrives, I'll scold them properly for not looking after their mother better."

"Here. Drink this. It'll settle you."

I looked down at the milk, and a grief swelled in my chest. Would there even be a next time?

Before every one of my losses, he had been just as attentive. From the late-night plates he prepared himself to the fruit he cut into the shapes I liked best, his care had always felt so real.

I thought his care was a sign of love, but it was actually a murder intent in disguise. "Husband, I don't like the milk's taste. Can I skip this one tonight?"

Lorenzo gave a helpless smile, but he didn't let me refuse. "Adriana, don't be stubborn. The Family physician said the more you dislike the food, the more your body needs it."

"If you don't rest well, the baby won't either. Aren't you the one who loves them the most? Be good. For the sake of our baby. Here, let me help you drink it."

He was half persuasive, half insistent as he pressed the rim of the glass to my lips. The crystal caught the low lamplight, and somewhere downstairs a soldier's footstep crossed the marble and went still. I had no chance to refuse.

Lorenzo, were you so afraid that my child would stand between Carmela's son and the seat? Or do you believe that the only woman worthy of carrying your blood is Carmela?

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

In less than half an hour, the effects of the poison began to take hold. I curled up on the bed in agony, drenched in cold sweat from the pain. Lorenzo had just finished summoning our private doctor when he returned to the room. It was as if he'd been waiting outside the door all along.

Even though I had been through this seven times before, losing my child once again still felt like a knife twisting in my heart.

Through the haze of pain, I vaguely heard the doctor's voice. "Signor Falcone, your wife has lost significantly more blood than in her previous miscarriages. I'm afraid her body has been critically damaged. She'll never be able to conceive again."

Lorenzo said nothing, his eyes red as he cradled me in his arms. "Adriana, don't worry. Even if we can't have children, I'll still love you. I'll take care of you for the rest of my life."

From the pampered heir who had every door in the territory opened for him, Lorenzo now personally cleaned the bloodstains from my body. He was worried I'd catch a chill after the miscarriage. So he held me tightly in his arms to keep me warm as I slept.

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

The tears I had been holding back for so long finally broke free. On the day they bound me to the Falcone name, Lorenzo had promised me happiness, but it was only a lie to keep me from standing in Carmela's way.

At that moment, I suddenly realized that my entire marriage had been nothing but a complete joke. A contract signed in good faith and answered with omertà. The one secret kept from me was the only one that mattered.

I quickly sent a message to my old friend beyond the Family's reach:

[You once invited me to leave all this behind and see the world with you, right? I've decided. I'll come to Lichtonia to see you the day after tomorrow.]

I put my phone down, but my lower abdomen still ached terribly.

The thought that I had just lost another child, and that it was his own father who had taken it from me, left me breathless with pain. I locked myself in the bathroom, letting my tears fall freely as I replayed all the moments I had shared with Lorenzo over the years.

When I stood up, my phone accidentally slipped from my hand.

I bent down to pick it up. Then I noticed something under the sink. A precious bundle, wrapped carefully in layers of expensive satin.

Curious, I unwrapped it, only to discover it was a thick photo album. An album filled with pictures of Carmela, from the age of fifteen to her current twenty-eight.

The design on the cover was familiar. I had seen it before, in the private study where Lorenzo kept the things no soldier was permitted to touch. Lorenzo had always loved his cameras, the one indulgence the legitimate front allowed him.

Although Lorenzo was Matteo's younger cousin, he was only a few years older than us. When we were children running through the estate, Lorenzo would often watch Matteo and me fighting over something. He looked aloof, as if he couldn't be bothered with the childish games we played.

One day, when Carmela had just turned fifteen, she approached me and asked if we could be friends. I didn't think much of it. Since I always saw her alone, I introduced her to Matteo and Lorenzo.

It was around that moment that Lorenzo started joining our gatherings. He even began learning photography.

I thought it was simply a sign of him maturing. In truth, it was because he had found the one he wanted.

The photos in the album. I only ever saw a few of them. The rest I never saw at all, not even back then.

Every smile, every frown, every glance and every fleeting gesture, Lorenzo's lens had caught all of Carmela's movements.

After the day our alliance was sealed, Lorenzo had never touched that camera again.

Once, I asked him to photograph me while I carried our child. He told me only that the camera was lost, and arranged for a famous man with a studio downtown to do the work instead.

In truth, nothing was lost. His lens was reserved solely for the one he loved.

While I quietly slid the album back into its place beneath the floorboard, my eyes had completely dried up. I could no longer shed tears for him.

I booked a passage out of the country on my phone, then drafted the papers to dissolve the marriage pact. Such a thing was almost unheard of in the Family, but if he loved Carmela that much, I may as well let him have her.

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

Lorenzo noticed, and it seemed to worry him. Unlike any other day, he prepared a careful breakfast for me with his own hands. He boiled an egg, peeled it slowly, and pressed it warm against the swelling around my eyes.

His gentle, attentive care almost made me question whether everything from last night had been nothing more than a bad dream.

Yet the emptiness in my belly reminded me that I was firmly grounded in reality.

Lorenzo sighed when he saw I would not take a single bite of the porridge he'd made.

"Adriana, we just lost our baby. I know you're heartbroken, and I'm hurting too, but you need to take care of yourself. After all these losses, your body is in bad shape. Please eat something, for my sake. Don't make me worry, okay?"

He smoothed the lapel of his jacket with the back of his hand as he said it.

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

Three months. By then my child would have already taken shape, yet I would never get the chance to hold him or see him.

Lorenzo's answer was the same as the previous seven times. "I've made sure the baby was properly buried. You're too emotional right now, and I don't want you to be even more heartbroken."

"My mother and the Don are devastated as well. Let's go to the family estate for dinner tonight. It'll do us all some good to spend time together."

The moment I stepped through the gates of the Falcone estate, past the soldiers who straightened and lowered their eyes as I passed, I saw Carmela clinging to Matteo's arm, her every gesture dripping with playful flirtation.

When she noticed me, she tilted her head slightly and proudly pushed her belly forward, as if showing it off.

"Oh, Adriana! It's been ages since I've seen you. Come, have a seat. I heard you lost another one. Be careful not to overexert that fragile body of yours!"

Ever since the wedding, things had been tense between me, Matteo, and Carmela. Whenever I came to the estate, I deliberately chose hours when they would not be there.

It seemed today was not one of those lucky days.

I glanced at Carmela's six-month belly and felt a sharp pang in my chest. She carried Lorenzo's child. That man had never let a single one of mine survive past three months.

When Donna, Lorenzo's mother and the matriarch of the household, saw me, her face soured at once.

"Useless. You can't even protect the child in your own womb. How many times is it now? And you still have the nerve to complain of exhaustion? How did my son ever end up bound to someone like you?"

Donna was Lorenzo's mother by blood and Matteo's stepmother by marriage. At fifty, she had been forced to watch the seat that should rightfully have passed to her own son slip toward Matteo instead. That, surely, had cut her deeply.

In the past, Lorenzo would have stood up for me. Now his eyes were fixed solely on Carmela, brimming with longing and devotion, blind to the tension between his mother and me.

"Donna, please don't be upset," Carmela said sweetly, her tone dripping with false concern. "It's only that Adriana isn't blessed with the fortune to be a mother. After losing so many, it isn't as though she wanted it to happen."

Donna scoffed coldly, her fingers closing around the heavy gold crucifix at her throat. "She's nothing but a cursed, barren woman, dragging my son down with her."

Playing the peacemaker, Carmela tried to soothe the room, even reaching to guide me toward a chair. But as she rose, she stumbled slightly.

She caught her balance quickly enough, yet Lorenzo did not hesitate. He shoved me aside and rushed to her.

Ignoring everyone else in the room, he pulled Carmela into his arms and asked, anxious, "Carmela, are you all right? You're carrying a child. Why are you walking about alone? Where is Matteo?"

Carmela flashed a sugary smile. "Matteo's in the States, handling Family business. He's about to take the seat, so he's been so very busy."

She shot me a mocking glance, then turned back to Lorenzo, putting on a painfully sweet, almost sickly expression.