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:

"Lorenzo, I think I turned my ankle just now. It hurts so much~"

Without a word, Lorenzo lifted her into his arms like a bride and carried her straight up to the second-floor bedroom of the compound, never once glancing at me. The soldiers along the staircase stepped aside for him, eyes lowered, as though they had seen nothing.

The Don's mother gave me a pointed look across the long table, her voice dripping with contempt. The black rosary at her wrist clicked once, bead against bead.

"Can't lay an egg, and can't even keep hold of your own man. If Matteo hadn't married Gioia first, do you think my son would ever have looked twice at you? And you still have the nerve to sit at this table. Go upstairs. The sight of you kills my appetite."

She had never liked me. I'd always known that.

To her, I was the woman Matteo had thrown away, the one who'd latched onto her son and brought shame on the Falcone name before the whole Family.

And after I'd lost so many children, her disgust only deepened.

But she was Lorenzo's mother, the matriarch of the bloodline, and I'd believed it was my own fault that I couldn't carry a child, so I swallowed the guilt.

Besides, Lorenzo used to speak up for me here and there, so every time, I let it go.

But now Lorenzo was too busy doting on Gioia. Why would he ever think of me?

For a moment, I almost wanted to tell them the truth. In the end, I let it die. Omertà had taught me that some words, once spoken at this table, could never be taken back.

I'd already decided to leave. There was no point wasting my breath.

I climbed the stairs without a word, and noticed that Gioia's bedroom door hadn't been shut all the way.

Some impulse I couldn't name pulled me toward it.

And there was Gioia, sprawled across the bed with her clothes in disarray, Lorenzo pressing down over her.

"Lorenzo, you're still the one who treats me best. Matteo can't father children, and if Adriana had a baby, he wouldn't be able to take the seat of the Family. Who knows how much I'd suffer after that." Her hand rested low on her belly as she spoke, daring the room to argue with what grew there.

Lorenzo's breath came shallow, the flush of want rising at the corners of his eyes.

"Does Matteo treat you well? Has he ever mistreated you?"

"No. Ever since I got pregnant, he can't dote on me enough. He's terrified I'll tire myself out, washes my feet for me himself, and he's even gentler with me in bed."

A bitter look crossed Lorenzo's face.

"As long as he's good to you, as long as you're happy, then I have no regrets."

"Matteo, you've done so much for me. I couldn't marry you, so the least I can do is give myself to you. Tonight, I'm yours."

Whatever restraint Lorenzo had left snapped. His movements turned harder, and the two of them tangled together in a frenzy.

I'd never known that Lorenzo, the Don who ordered men into the ground without changing his expression, always so cold and self-controlled, had a side that could come undone like this.

Tears slid down my face as I stumbled back to my room.

All night, Lorenzo never came back.

The next morning, he looked at me, apologetic.

"Adriana, I meant to come keep you company last night, but Winslow held me up talking for hours. I just couldn't get away."

I didn't expose his lie. I turned and went to wait for him by the door of the compound.

A bucket of slop, thick with leftover scraps from the Family table, came crashing down over my head. Gioia appeared in front of me out of nowhere, the bucket still dangling from her hand.

"Adriana, the way Lorenzo lost himself on top of me, wasn't it something to see?" She smiled, taunting.

So she'd left that door open on purpose.

"Miscarrying doesn't feel good, does it? But you won't have to worry about that anymore. After all, you'll never be able to have a child again."

"And you still kept getting pregnant, one after another. Did you think you could fight me for the seat as the Family's first lady? Stop dreaming. For my sake, Lorenzo not only gave up his own claim to the throne, he got me pregnant himself. And those dead babies of yours? Every one of them became my strengthening rite." Her hand pressed flat and hard against her belly, the only crack in her smile.

My head shot up, my voice shaking.

"What did you say?"

"Why else do you think Lorenzo told you, every time you lost the child, that the baby was already buried and wouldn't let you see it? Because I told him eating that was good for my body, of course."

Despair, fury, and disbelief flooded my mind all at once. The world went very still around me, as if even the soldiers in the courtyard had stopped breathing.

So this was why Lorenzo never let me see my children?

For Gioia's sake, how could he have gone this far?!