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.

“Lorenzo, I think I might have twisted my ankle just now. It hurts so much,” Carmela said, all pouty.

Lorenzo didn’t say a word. He simply swept Carmela up into a princess carry and headed straight for the upstairs bedroom, not even sparing me a glance.

Across the long table, beneath the oil portraits of dead Falcone men, Donna shot me a pointed look. Her fingers found the heavy gold crucifix at her throat.

“Not only can you not give the blood an heir, but you can’t even keep a man. If Matteo hadn’t married Carmela first, do you really think my son would’ve ever looked at you? How dare you sit at my table? Get upstairs. You ruin my appetite just by breathing the same air.” Her voice dripped with cold contempt, and the crucifix gleamed between her fingers as if it absolved her of every word.

I had always known Donna didn’t like me.

She saw me as the woman Matteo had passed over, the one who had latched onto her son and made a fool of the Falcone name. And after all the children I’d lost, her disdain for me only deepened.

Since she was Lorenzo’s mother, I tried to tell myself it was my fault for failing to carry a child into this family. I felt guilty, especially in the days when Lorenzo would step in and stand between her words and me.

I endured it all.

Right now, though, Lorenzo was so absorbed in Carmela that he didn’t even seem to remember I existed.

For a brief moment, I considered speaking the truth aloud in that room of men who lived and died by silence. But omertà ran in my blood now too, and I quickly pushed the thought aside.

I had already made up my mind to leave. So what was the point in saying anything at all?

I silently made my way up the wide staircase and noticed that Carmela’s bedroom door was slightly ajar.

Something compelled me to move closer.

What I saw made my heart freeze. Carmela, her clothes askew, lying on the bed with Lorenzo over her.

“Lorenzo, you’re still the one who cares for me the most. Matteo can’t give the Don a son, and if you let Adriana carry your child to term, he won’t take the seat. If that happens… I don’t know how much suffering I’ll face.”

Lorenzo gasped between his movements, his eyes darkened with desire. “Is Matteo treating you well? Has he laid a hand on you?”

“Ever since the baby, he treats me like the wife of a Don already. He’s terrified I’ll tire myself. He washes my feet with his own hands. He’s been gentler with me in bed.”

Lorenzo’s expression turned slightly bitter. “As long as he treats you well… as long as you’re happy… I have no regrets.”

“Matteo’s done so much for me. I can’t wear his ring and mean it, but I can give myself to you. Tonight, I belong to you.”

Lorenzo could no longer hold himself back, and their bodies moved harder against one another.

I never knew that the cold, controlled man the whole Family feared could lose himself like this.

Tears fell as I stumbled back to my bedroom.

Lorenzo didn’t come back the entire night.

The next morning, Lorenzo stared at me with deep guilt. The back of his hand passed once over the lapel of his jacket, smoothing it flat.

“Adriana, I meant to come back to you last night. But Mother kept me until dawn, talking. I just… couldn’t get away.”

I didn’t call out his lie. I simply turned toward the door to wait for him.

A bucket of cold kitchen scraps came down over me without warning, and Carmela appeared, holding the slop pail, a mocking smile on her lips.

“Adriana, did you enjoy watching Lorenzo lose his mind over me?” she taunted.

So she had left the door open on purpose.

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

“If you still had the nerve to get pregnant, I’d make you feel the price of it. You will never take my place as the woman who sits beside the seat of the Falcone Family.”

“For me, Lorenzo didn’t just hand over his claim to the Don’s chair. He helped put this child in me. And those babies you lost? They’ve become my… supplements.”

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

Carmela chuckled. For half a second her lip went perfectly still, the performance slipping its mask, before she remembered to soften it again. “What? Did you never wonder why, every time you miscarried, Lorenzo told you the child was already buried, that you couldn’t see it? It’s because I told him to keep it from you. Consuming them… it’s good for my health.”

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

So that was the reason Lorenzo never let me see the children.

How could he?

Everything that happened… all of it was for Carmela?

Carmela laughed, and the sound curdled the air of the kitchen like spoiled wine.

"Stop making that pitiful face. Looking for someone to blame, are you? If you want to do that, then blame yourself for being useless! It was only natural that your children were fit to be my nourishment when their mother was someone as weak as you!"

I couldn't take it anymore. I raised my hand and slapped Carmela across the face.

Smack!

Unfortunately, my slap never landed on her face. Lorenzo had swiftly yanked Carmela behind him and took the hit himself.

He then shoved me forcefully to the floor, his anger boiling over. "Adriana Russo, what are you doing?!"

Carmela cried her eyes out. "Lorenzo, I just wanted to comfort Adriana. I meant to tell her not to grieve over the child she lost."

"But she got jealous that I'm the one carrying. She accused me of stealing her place in the famiglia, her future at the head table, and tried to pour all her bitterness on me. I pushed her to protect myself. It wasn't intentional! I already apologized, but she screamed that I should lose mine too, and raised her hand to me!"

Before I could speak a word in my own defense, Lorenzo looked at me with disdain. "Adriana. I never knew you were such a small woman."

"If you couldn't keep your baby, that's your own barren body's failing. Why take your venom out on Carmela and repay her kindness this way? Don't covet what was never yours. Apologize to Carmela. Now."

Barren. Hah.

The more I looked at him, the more he became a stranger to me, a face I had slept beside for years and never once known. "Lorenzo. Tell me. What did you do with the bodies of my lost babies?"

Lorenzo's brow furrowed. His hand drifted to his lapel, the back of his knuckles smoothing the fine wool flat. "I buried them properly, of course. In consecrated ground. Hadn't I told you that?"

His performance was flawless. The Family had taught him well.

"You're right, Lorenzo. I shouldn't covet what was never mine." My thumb found my wedding band and turned it once, slow, around my finger. "Don't worry. I won't raise my hand to Carmela again." Then I left the kitchen without sparing either of them a second glance.

Some flicker of unease must have moved through him. Behind me I heard the sharp catch of his breath, the start of my name in his throat. Carmela cut it short.

"Lorenzo, the slop she had them pour on me has made me sick. Take me to the Family physician?"

Lorenzo hesitated, only for a heartbeat. In the end he did not follow me.

Back inside the rooms that had been mine in this house, I gathered everything Lorenzo had ever given me across all the years of the alliance, and I fed it to the fire one piece at a time. The flames threw shadows that moved like men against the walls.

When my hand closed on the alliance contract, the paper that had bound a minor family's daughter to the Falcone bloodline, my phone chimed. A message on WeTalk. I opened it and read.

[Adriana, I only had to tell Lorenzo I felt unwell and he summoned the finest birthing physicians in the territory.]

[He says if the man he wants is overseas, he'll fly him home by private helicopter tonight. Aren't you jealous?]

I didn't answer. As I finished reading, I lifted my eyes to the alliance contract already curling in the flames, the names on it going black, then to ash.

It made no difference to me whether Lorenzo saw the fire or not. I knew he wasn't coming home tonight.

Sure enough, the phone rang.

"Adriana. Carmela's having trouble with the pregnancy. Matteo's away on Family business, and as her brother-in-law the duty falls to me. Don't be angry with me."

I thought of the photograph Carmela had sent earlier on WeTalk. Her glowing face as she ate fruit Lorenzo had peeled and cut for her with his own hands. She had not looked sick at all.

"Of course. I understand," I said. "A pregnant woman's wellbeing comes first. Take good care of her."

A brief silence on the line. Then Lorenzo spoke, his voice gone soft, the way a knife goes quiet sliding from its sheath. "Adriana. I didn't mean to be harsh with you today. I know our baby just left us. I know you're hurting."

"But Carmela is carrying the Falcone blood, and neither of us can give the Don a son of our own. If something happens to her, I think my mother and father would never recover from it."

I let out a bitter laugh I couldn't hold back. So many excuses. Why did a made man, a contender for the seat, need so many excuses?

"Stay home and rest," he went on, his tone shifting, smoothing, the lapel-stroke I couldn't see but could hear in every word. "Tomorrow is your birthday. I've taken the finest suite in one of our hotels. I have a surprise planned for you. I'll come for you in the morning."