Three hours before the wedding, the man I was to marry sent word he would not be coming for me. He had turned his car around and signed the blood union papers with Gioia Russo instead.

I stood there in the hotel that fronted for the Family, swallowing the whispers of the guests, when the bridegroom's uncle, Lorenzo Falcone, pushed open the doors.

He came with the most lavish motorcade the Family had ever put on the street, presented me with nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine roses, and told me he had loved me in secret for years, that taking me as his wife had been the stuff of his dreams.

Moved that he had spared me such a loss of face before the whole Family, I nodded yes on the spot.

Three years of marriage. Seven miscarriages. And then, against all odds, I was carrying again.

Lorenzo held me and spun me in slow circles in the great room of the compound, aching and overjoyed all at once, telling me to rest and protect the child, that he would cherish me and our baby with his life.

Three months along, I happened to overhear him speaking with the Family physician outside the study.

"Don Falcone, just as the previous seven times, the drug is already in your wife's milk."

"I don't understand. Gioia carries your children to term without trouble. Why never your wife?"

Lorenzo laughed at himself, low and quiet.

"Only the one who sires an heir takes the seat of the Family. Matteo Falcone can't father a child. How could I bear to let Gioia suffer down the line for that?"

So all those vows of devotion had been nothing but lies.

If that was how it was, then I would simply leave.

——

"By doing this, you're not only giving up your claim to the seat of the Family, you're losing seven children that were yours and your wife's."

"You've had me forging young Matteo's medical records all this while. He still doesn't know he can never sire an heir. When Gioia's child is born, it won't even be able to call you Father. Is it truly worth it?"

Lorenzo's expression turned tender and wistful, the way a man's voice softens only for one woman in the world.

"What of it? Since I couldn't make Gioia mine all those years ago, I'll guard her happiness for the rest of my life. No one gets to ruin it. Not even my own child with Adriana Marchetti."

The physician hesitated. In the hush of the corridor I heard him lower his voice.

"But your wife has already lost seven. One more, and I'm afraid she may never be able to conceive again."

Lorenzo pressed his lips together. For a long moment there was only the silence of a man whose every word ends lives. Then he said,

"It doesn't matter. I'll take care of her for the rest of her life anyway."

The veins on the back of the hand gripping the study door handle stood out, trembling beyond my control. My thumb found the thin gold band on my finger and turned it, around and around.

Before Lorenzo could find me there, I fled back to the bedroom, soul scattered, and slid down to the floor.

All this time I had believed I was simply frail, that my body couldn't hold a child, and that was why I had lost seven in three years.

The old Don had long since put out the word through the Family: whether it was his son Lorenzo or his grandson Matteo, whoever first sired an heir of the blood would inherit the seat of the Family.

So many losses in so short a span had drained the life from me, and even so, I had never complained. I had thought myself a burden to Lorenzo, and carried the guilt of it like a stone in my chest.

To keep me from suspecting, he had refused every precaution, letting my health be spent, time and time again.

In his eyes, my body, my dead children, were nothing but obstacles cleared from Gioia Russo's road to happiness.

"Adriana, why are you sitting on the floor?"

Lorenzo walked into the bedroom and crossed to me at once, his face all concern, and bent to help me up.

"I'm fine. Just a little sickness a moment ago."

He rubbed my back tenderly, easing the breath back into me.

"Tesoro, you've had it so hard. Next time the nausea comes, call for me. Don't bear it alone. It breaks my heart."

"Ever since you fell pregnant you've slept so poorly. When this baby comes, I'll have to give him a good smack for not caring about his mother."

"Here, drink a glass of warm milk. It'll help you sleep."

Looking at that glass of milk, an ache rose in my chest. Would there really be a next time?

Every time before a miscarriage, he had been exactly like this, either thoughtfully fixing me something in the dead of night, or making me a bowl of my favorite fruit with his own hands.

I thought it was proof that he loved me. It was only an executioner's disguise.

"Honey, I don't like the taste of milk. Can I skip it?"

Lorenzo gave a helpless little laugh, but his tone left no room for refusal. In this house, a refusal was never a refusal. It was only a delay.

"Adriana, don't be difficult. The family physician said the things you crave the least are exactly what your body lacks the most."

"If you don't sleep well, the baby won't rest either. Aren't you the one who loves him most? Be good. For our baby's sake, let me feed it to you."

Half coaxing, half pressing, he tipped the rim of the glass against my lips, leaving me no chance to refuse. His hand was steady as a tailor's threading a needle, and just as patient.

Lorenzo, are you really so afraid my child might stand in Gioia's way?

Or is it that, in your heart, she's the only one you'll ever let bear your blood.

I shut my eyes in despair and drained the entire glass.

In under half an hour, the drug took hold. I curled up on the bed, the pain wringing me until sweat soaked my hair.

Lorenzo had barely set down the phone with the family physician before the man came through the door. He'd clearly been waiting outside in the dark of the corridor the whole time, the way the Family's men always waited, summoned before the order was even spoken.

Even after seven times before, losing a child again still felt like a blade twisting in me.

Through the haze of pain, I heard the doctor say:

"Don Falcone, this miscarriage caused far more bleeding than any of the others. I'm afraid her body is permanently damaged. She'll never be able to conceive again."

Lorenzo said nothing. The room went very still, the way a room goes still when a man with power decides what comes next. His eyes rimmed red, he gathered me into his arms.

"Adriana, don't worry. Even without a child, I still love you. I'll take care of you for the rest of your life."

A man who'd been served and feared since boyhood, the Don of the Falcone Family, cleaned the blood from my body with his own hands. Afraid I'd grow cold after the miscarriage, he held me tight against him as we slept. Outside the door, I knew, a soldier stood watch, as one always did. There was no corner of this compound that did not belong to him.

Deep in the night, Lorenzo murmured in his sleep:

"Gioia, don't be afraid. I'll make sure you get your happiness."

The tears I'd held back for so long broke loose all at once.

Years ago, when they signed the blood union papers that bound me to him, he'd promised me happiness too. Just a lie to keep me quiet, to keep me from disturbing Gioia.

It hit me then that my marriage, all these years, had been one complete joke.

I texted my oldest friend, far beyond the Family's reach:

"You said last time you wanted me to travel the world with you. I've decided. I'm flying out to you the day after tomorrow."

I set down the phone. My lower belly still ached.

Thinking that I'd just lost another child, strangled by its own father's hands, the pain made it hard to breathe.

I locked myself in the bathroom, turning over every little moment of these years with Lorenzo, letting the tears fall as they would.

When I stood, my phone slipped from my hand and dropped to the floor.

I bent to pick it up and noticed something tucked beneath the vanity cabinet, wrapped layer after layer in expensive silk, the kind of silk that came off the bolts of his couture house, treasured beyond measure.

I unwrapped it and found a thick photo album.

An album of every photo of Gioia, from the age of fifteen to twenty-eight now.

I'd seen that album cover before, in Lorenzo's private study at the couture house, the one room of his legitimate front no associate was permitted to enter.

And Lorenzo was an avid photographer.

Lorenzo was Matteo's uncle, though only a few years older than us.

When we were kids, he'd watch me and Matteo raise a ruckus with that cold, aloof face, the same stillness the older men wore at a sit-down, as if he couldn't be bothered with the childish games of brats.

Then came the year I turned fifteen. Gioia approached me wanting to be friends, and I didn't think twice. She always seemed so alone, so I introduced her to Matteo and Lorenzo too.

It seemed to be from that moment on that Lorenzo started joining our outings, started learning photography.

I'd thought the boy had simply grown up and turned over a new leaf. It turned out he'd met someone he loved.

Of the photos in that album, only a few were ones I'd ever seen. Most were moments even I had never noticed.

Every flicker of Gioia's expression, every pout, every flash of temper, even the simple gesture of tucking back her hair, Lorenzo had captured it all in his lens.

After we married, he never touched a camera again.

Once I asked him to take a portrait of me, swollen with child, and he claimed the camera was lost, then turned around and referred me to some famous photographer the Family kept on retainer.

It was never lost. His lens simply had room for only one person, the woman he loved.

My eyes were dry, wrung out, unable to spill a single tear. I quietly put the album back where I'd found it, sliding it behind the cistern the way a soldier hides a piece he doesn't want found.

On my phone I bought passage out of the country, somewhere the Falcone reach thinned to nothing, then drafted the papers to dissolve our blood union.

If he loved Gioia this much, I would set him free.

The next morning, my eyes were swollen like walnuts.

Lorenzo fretted over me, made me a breakfast with his own hands, then boiled eggs and peeled them carefully, pressing them to my lids to bring the swelling down. A tailor's hands, precise, gentle, the same hands that signed away men's lives over espresso.

The tender, attentive picture he made almost had me doubting whether last night had been a dream.

But the hollow flatness of my belly reminded me. All of it was real.

Seeing that I hadn't touched a bite, he sighed:

"Adriana, our baby is gone. I know you're hurting, and it breaks my heart too. But you have to take care of yourself. You've lost so many these past years, your body is already so weak. Eat a little more. Don't make me worry, all right?"

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

Three months. My baby would have taken shape by now, but he would never get the chance to come into this world.

And the answer I got was the same as the last seven times:

"I've already had the baby properly laid to rest. You're in a bad way right now. I was afraid seeing him would only break your heart."

He ran his thumb along the inside seam of his cuff as he said it, the way he checked a stitch, smoothing over the lie until it lay flat.

"Mamma and the old Don heard you lost another. They're devastated. We'll go back to the compound for dinner tonight, and pay our respects while we're there."

The moment we stepped through the gates of the old compound, soldiers straightening at the sight of him, I saw Gioia draped on my mother-in-law's arm, cooing and playing the darling.

When she spotted me, she thrust her belly out higher, one hand resting low and possessive over it, almost showing it off:

"Oh, Adriana, you came? Long time no see. Sit down, sit. I heard you lost another one, you mustn't tire yourself out."

Ever since the wedding, things between me and Matteo and Gioia had been beyond repair. Whenever I came to the compound, I made sure to pick times they wouldn't be there.

I never imagined I'd run into them today.

I looked at her six-month belly, and the thought that this was Lorenzo's child sent a stab through my chest.

He had never once let the child in my womb live past three months.

The instant she saw me, Margherita's face darkened. The black rosary at her wrist began to click, bead by bead:

"Useless waste, can't even keep a baby in her belly. How many times is this now? And you've got the nerve to talk about being tired? How did my son end up saddled with a thing like you?"

She was Lorenzo's birth mother, yet only Matteo's step-grandmother, and just fifty this year.

Watching the seat of the Don that should have gone to her own son get snatched away by Matteo, how could she not be bitter?

Once upon a time Lorenzo would have spoken up for me, but right now his eyes held only Gioia, brimming with longing and besotted devotion. He didn't hear a word anyone said. The room had gone quiet around his stillness, the way it always did, and no one dared fill the silence.

"Nonna, please don't be angry. Adriana just isn't fated with the blessing of motherhood, that's all. She's lost so many babies, it's not as if she wanted to."

Margherita gave a cold snort, the beads falling still in her fingers:

"A jinx, that's all she is. Nothing but a drag on my son."

Gioia made her hollow show of pleading my case, then went to pull me toward a seat, but the moment she rose her body swayed.

Even though she steadied herself almost at once, Lorenzo still shoved me aside in a heartbeat.

Heedless of his mother standing right there, heedless of the soldiers along the wall, he gathered Gioia into his arms and asked anxiously:

"Gioia, are you all right? You're carrying, why did you come out here on your own? Where's Matteo?"

Gioia laughed, sweet and cloying, her hand pressing flat against her belly:

"Matteo's away on business in the States. He's taking over the seat soon, he's swamped."

She looked at me, a taunt in her eyes, and crooned to Lorenzo in a simpering voice: