"Have you figured out what you did wrong yet?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Everything went dark and then—I was out.

When I came to, I was back in the bedroom, lying under a thick, heavy comforter. The heat from the radiator pressed down like a hand, suffocating, but I still couldn't stop shivering.

"You're awake?"

Lorenzo sat on the edge of the bed, holding a steaming cup of water. Behind him, a soldier stood just inside the door, hands folded, eyes on nothing.

"Take your meds," he said, as if nothing had happened. "Why didn't you say anything if you were feeling sick? Instead, you chose to throw a tantrum and cause a scene in front of the whole compound."

I turned my face away, refusing to look at him.

"Don't be so stubborn," he said sharply. "Your fever's hit 104. Are you trying to die?"

"Wouldn't that be convenient for you?"

My voice was raw and raspy, barely more than a whisper. Lorenzo's expression shifted—guilt and something like concern flickered across his face. For a moment, he didn't look like the same man who'd forced me into the snow before every associate in the house.

He took advantage of my hesitation, grabbed my chin and forced the pills into my mouth, then tipped the cup of water after them.

I choked, coughing hard, water spilling down my chin and soaking my neck. I must've looked completely pathetic.

Right then, the door swung open.

Serena walked in, her eyes glinting with triumph. "Enzo, your mother's here!"

A moment later, Donna appeared in the doorway, black rosary beads moving slow through her fingers. She took one look at me and gasped.

"What on earth—Adriana, what happened to you?"

Lorenzo let go of me, wiping the spilled water off his hand like it was nothing. "She's just being dramatic. Got sick, threw a fit and now refuses to take her medicine."

Donna immediately scolded her son for not taking better care of me. Then, smiling sweetly, she produced a beautifully wrapped box and held it out.

"Adriana, this is something I picked out just for you."

She gave me a subtle wink, her way of saying this is your reward for cooperating. Her eyes told me the rest: it was time I raised the matter of letting Lorenzo take both women under one roof, the way the old houses did when the blood demanded it.

I didn't take the gift. My throat burned too much to speak and honestly, I didn't want to say a single word. So I shut my eyes and turned away.

But she couldn't wait.

Donna clutched Lorenzo's hand, the beads gone still against her palm. "Enzo, I've been meaning to talk to you. Adriana said something yesterday. She was thinking, since Serena's stayed so loyal to this Family after your brother passed, maybe it's time she carried a child. It would give her someone to rely on. Something to secure her place, for the future of the name."

The room fell silent. Even the soldier by the door seemed to stop breathing.

Lorenzo's face shifted, shock, then rage, like he'd just been slapped. "What the hell are you talking about, Mamma?"

Completely oblivious, she kept going, excited now. "It's not just me. Adriana brought it up herself. And honestly, I think it makes sense. What do you say?"

"Adriana." He spun toward me, fury written across his face.

"All this because I haven't touched you? Did you dream up something this insane to shame me under my own roof? What happened to what we swore to each other? And what the hell does that make Serena—just a womb to be passed around the Family?"

I opened my eyes, finally meeting the gaze of the man putting on a show as if he hadn't been sneaking to her bed behind my back for God knows how long.

So I said calmly, "I brought it up. What, are you saying you're not interested?"

My question caught Lorenzo mid-breath, his angry words dying in his throat.

He didn't dare deny it, not really. But he also didn't want to look too eager, didn't want the truth in his eyes to betray the thrill he was trying to hide. His thumb found the rim of the water cup and traced it slowly, though he never drank.

Before he could answer, Serena suddenly burst into tears.

"Enzo, I don't know what I did to upset your wife so much, to make her humiliate me like this," she sobbed, voice trembling just enough to sound believable. She pressed a black-lace handkerchief to her lips, a beat too late. "I'm your brother's widow. I've buried a husband. People in this Family already whisper enough about me, and now this."

Lorenzo gently patted her shoulder, eyes full of pity. You could see the tension in him, how badly he wanted to wrap her in his arms and play the hero. But instead he turned to me, face hardening.

"Adriana, I can't believe how twisted you've become."

Finally, Donna seemed to feel the shift in the room. The rosary began to move again. Awkwardly, she tried to smooth things over.

"Enzo, come on, can't you just do this one thing, for your brother's sake?" she said, her voice hopeful, a little desperate. "I know you want to protect what you have with Adriana, but the Marchetti name can't end with you. Can't you think of it as giving your mother the grandchild this Family needs?"

Donna leaned in, the black rosary beads sliding through her fingers, her voice dropping low as though the scheme itself required reverence.

"Once Serena carries a child, we'll simply say it came from your brother's seed, frozen before he passed. A doctor's miracle. No one will ever know the truth. It won't touch your union with Adriana at all…"

Lorenzo cut her off, his voice flat as a blade laid on velvet. "Mother. It's one thing for Adriana to make a spectacle of herself. Why are you feeding her poison?"

He turned to me, and his voice climbed. "This is nothing but a woman throwing a tantrum because I haven't laid a hand on her in years!"

I let out a cold laugh, watching him perform as if there were an audience beyond these walls he needed to convince.

What a farce. This union was beyond saving. Rotten to the marrow.

Lorenzo loved Serena. That much no mask could hide. Yet for the sake of appearances, for her precious standing in the Family, he would not dissolve our union and take her openly.

He refused to be known as the Don who cast off his wife for his dead brother's widow. So instead he did everything behind locked doors. Every betrayal, every filthy thing. And used me as the front. Their shield. Their alibi before the whole Cosa Nostra.

"What in God's name are you laughing at?" he snapped.

"Nothing," I said softly.

I pushed myself up from the bed, weak but numb, my voice light. Careless.

"It was only a passing thought. Do as you please."

Something in Lorenzo's expression shifted. His eyes burned red, fury clouding them. Except beneath the anger sat something else. Glee. A quiet, hungry satisfaction.

"Since you're feeling so generous," he said coldly, his arm curling around Serena, "I'll take you at your word."

Then, with deliberate cruelty, he made his declaration.

"I'll be taking Serena to a foreign city for a honeymoon. Somewhere far from the territory. As for you, you'll stay here and see to my mother. And while you're at it, you may as well learn to tend a woman with child. And later, the child itself."

Donna lit up as though it were Christmas dinner and the whole table had risen for her. "Oh, Lorenzo, how thoughtful. It's better this way. Adriana won't have to watch the two of you together. It would only break her heart."

Serena flushed and pressed herself into him, all false modesty and fluttering lashes, a widow playing the trembling virgin. She lifted her black-lace handkerchief to her lips, the grief arriving a beat too late, the way it always did when there was someone to see it. She made a show of shrinking back, of objecting.

Lorenzo silenced her with a kiss. Right there. In front of me.

Donna cast a careful glance my way, bracing for a reaction. I didn't flinch. I only stared, my face empty as an unlit room.

That seemed enough to settle her. "Lorenzo, perhaps just… soften it a little in front of Adriana, hmm?" she murmured gently, still watching me from the corner of her eye, the beads never pausing between her fingers.

This whole Family. What a circus of them. They truly believed I saw none of it.

By the end of the day, Lorenzo had already arranged the travel for the following week. The flight out of the territory, beyond the Family's reach.

He couldn't wait.

After the fever finally broke, I went quietly to work.

I had to gather proof. Real leverage. Enough to detonate all of it before they slipped away to their little fairy tale abroad.

That night, while Lorenzo sat late over Family business in the study, I slipped into the one place I had never been permitted to enter. His bedroom.

Five years bound to him, and I had never once crossed that threshold.

Lorenzo always said that a true, sacred union demanded boundaries. Purity of spirit. Even his bedroom had been forbidden to me. His own wife.

The room was cold and clinical. Stark gray and white, not a single human trace in it. Just like him. Distant, sterile, controlled.

I searched everything. Drawers, the nightstands, beneath the bed. Nothing.

I was ready to give up when I noticed it, tucked into the far corner of the wardrobe. A small safe, nearly swallowed by the shadow.

I tried Serena's birthday. The lock gave without resistance.

Inside was a flood of photographs. Hundreds, perhaps more. All of Serena.

The earliest were plainly stolen. Grainy shots from crooked angles, a man watching through a cracked door, a window. Then the tone changed. They became her own. Deliberate, sultry, pupils blown wide, lips parted. Her gaze full of knowing.

Disgust clawed up my throat, but I forced myself to keep looking.

Beside the photographs lay a leather-bound journal. I opened it. The first entry was dated the day Lorenzo and I met.

"Met a girl at the library today. She asked whether I loved Plato too. The way she said it almost made her feel like my sister-in-law. But I can't hold thoughts like that about Serena, can I. I need a distraction. A girl on my arm. Adriana will do."

My hands began to shake, but I read on.

"Adriana is naïve. She'll never see that she's only a tool. Every time Serena is near, I have to fight myself not to stare. Not to touch."

"Today we buried my brother. I nearly did something unforgivable in the chapel, at the graveside. Lucky that Serena was too lost in grief to notice how vile I truly am."

"Adriana keeps trying to reach me. It's pathetic. Why are women always so desperate. Serena isn't like that. She's pure. She's still keeping herself for my brother."

Tears blurred the page. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood, anything to keep from making a sound. Everything I had believed was love. Every soft word, every distant smile. All of it a lie.

I was done being their cover story.

The final page was dated three months ago.

"Visited my brother's grave today. Serena said she's known all along about the photos, that she's been suppressing her feelings for me for years. I was overwhelmed. Lost control. I took her right there, in front of my brother's headstone."

The journal slipped from my hands and hit the Persian carpet with a dull thud.

A wave of cold swept through me, seizing my chest. My stomach churned violently. I gripped the wall just to stay upright.

So this was it. From the very beginning, I had never been the love story. I was just the cover. The sacred union sold to every capo and every allied house so the Marchetti name could keep its honor clean while the two of them buried their sin beneath it.

A shield for their shame.

Then, a sound. Soft, almost imperceptible, coming from deep inside the closet. I turned, pulse hammering in my ears, and noticed something I'd missed before: a narrow seam in the back panel.

It was a hidden door.

I pushed it open. A narrow, dusty passage stretched forward, connecting to the house next door, his dead brother's old quarters within the compound.

The walls were plastered with photos of Lorenzo and Serena. Candid shots, posed portraits, some so graphic I had to look away.

My hands were shaking as I raised my phone.

Click. Click. Click.

Every photo. Every piece of it. I recorded it all.

I had just turned to leave when footsteps echoed from the hallway.

Serena's voice, sickly sweet, edged with laughter. "Lorenzo, are you sure Adriana won't find out?"

Then Lorenzo's voice, dismissive. "Relax. That idiot's probably in our room crying her eyes out right now."

I froze. There was no time to think. No time to breathe. I ducked into the passageway and pulled the hidden door shut just as their shadows crossed the closet.

Through the narrow gap in the hidden door, I watched Lorenzo pull Serena down onto the bed.

They didn't even try to pretend. They couldn't wait to get their hands on each other.

Serena giggled, casting a lazy glance toward the half-closed panel. "Easy. You were a little rough last night," she purred.

Lorenzo sank his teeth into her earlobe. "Well, you shouldn't be so irresistible."

He laughed low in his throat, voice thick with lust. "When we're out of the country, away from all of them, I'm not letting you out of bed for three days."

I clamped both hands over my mouth, pressing so hard my fingernails dug into my palms.

Their moans, their breathless whispers, it was like venom, sliding into my ears, coiling around the last threads of my dignity.

I didn't move. Not until it was over. Not until they were wrapped in each other's arms, fast asleep.

Then I slipped out through the hidden passage and ran away. I got back to my room, silently shaking as I calmed down my nerves.

Once the door clicked shut behind me, I didn't cry. I opened my laptop. Gathered every photo, every recording. Then I called a different consigliere. One who actually worked for me.

We drafted a new dissolution of the union. One that wouldn't leave me empty-handed this time.

In the days that followed, Lorenzo didn't even bother hiding it. He'd kiss Serena right in front of me. Whisper things in her ear, let his hands wander across her waist as if I wasn't even there.

I said nothing. I packed my things, one bag at a time.

When I threw all the gifts he'd ever given me into the trash, he finally snapped.

"Adriana! What the hell are you doing?"

I calmly slid the dissolution papers across the table. "Sign it."

Lorenzo glanced down, lips curling into a smirk. He picked up his wine glass and ran his thumb slowly along the rim, not drinking.

"What's this? A confession letter? Shame you only realized your mistakes now. Bit late for that, don't you think?" Without reading a word of it, he scribbled his name, then flung the document in my face.

"Serena and I fly out this afternoon, somewhere none of this can touch us. You stay here, get cozy with that maternity nurse and start learning how to take care of pregnant women and babies."

As Lorenzo spoke, he casually pointed to a woman I hadn't even noticed standing in the doorway.

"By the way, this is the specialist I brought in for the birth. Paid top dollar, laundered clean. So do yourself a favor and learn from her."

With that, Lorenzo wrapped his arm around Serena and walked out like he was the hero of his own story.

I didn't flinch. I picked up the dissolution papers from the floor, ignoring the smug, amused looks of the soldiers who lined the hall. Then I went upstairs, packed the last of my things, and walked out of that house for good.

The moment I got into the car, my phone rang.

It was Donna. "Adriana, honey, I know you're upset. But going with Lorenzo will only make things harder on you. Just stay home, out of sight, out of mind. It's better that way, don't you think?" I could hear the faint click of her rosary beads working through her fingers.

That faux-concerned tone, that smug little martyr act. She didn't care about me. She just didn't want me disgracing her golden boy's escape.

I answered coolly, without a flicker of emotion. "You don't have to worry. Lorenzo and I are done. The union's dissolved. I won't be ruining any more of his plans."

Before she could respond, I hung up, and blocked her number.

Not long after, just as I arrived at the airfield, my phone buzzed again.

A message from Lorenzo.

["I'll come back once Serena's carrying. As long as you behave, I'll still give you a child. Through IVF, of course."]

I stared at the screen and smiled.

Not the kind of smile he would recognize. This one wasn't bitter. Or broken. It was the beginning of something he would never see coming.

His message was meant to sound generous. Merciful, even. But it only made me laugh. A bitter, humorless laugh.

I blocked him without hesitation.

Then I opened my photo gallery, selected every intimate photo of him and Serena, the ones that would break Omertà and burn his standing in the Cosa Nostra to ash, and sent the whole batch straight to an outsider I knew wouldn't hesitate.