"Still lying there on the floor like a dog. What are you doing? If you want a handout, get out and go begging on some corner. This Family doesn't feed low, useless women like you."

Concetta smoothed the black lace at her sleeve, two slow strokes, before she went on. "You can't be bothered with your own son, and you can't hold your husband's heart either. I hear you can't ever carry a child again? My son binding himself to a wife like you was the worst luck eight lifetimes over. Get lost. Every second I look at you takes ten years off my life."

Humiliation washed over me. Thinking of the severance papers already drawn up on my phone, the pact I meant to break, I said nothing.

I struggled to my feet and limped toward the study upstairs.

I slipped the printed papers into my bag and went to find Dominic in the guest room.

But they weren't there. Only the wet nurse remained, cradling a well-fed Matteo as he slept.

I was still puzzling over it when a strange sound reached me from the bedroom that belonged to Dominic and me.

The door hadn't been shut all the way. Vittoria sat astride Dominic, her blouse hanging wide open, her voice syrupy.

"Dominic, I have so much milk, and Matteo takes so little. I'm painfully full."

"It hurts so much. Help me draw it out, won't you~"

Dominic hesitated.

"Vittoria, don't. You only gave birth two days ago, your body can't take it. You already took enough of a risk carrying my child behind that man's back. I can't hurt you any more…"

Vittoria pressed his head down.

"Silly Dominic, if I'm not afraid, what are you afraid of? Bearing your child was my own choice. He's off running his territory across the water all year, he doesn't have a clue. Come on, comfort me. Don't you want a taste of something hard-won?"

Dominic couldn't hold back any longer. He opened his mouth and latched on.

The sounds from inside grew filthier by the second. My stomach turned, and I couldn't watch any more. I fled the old estate as if running for my life, past the soldier at the gate who kept his eyes carefully forward.

Only when I breathed the night air outside did the suffocating feeling ease a little, but the tears wouldn't stop falling.

Dominic, you knew I was right downstairs. How could you still dare do something like that? And in our own bedroom?!

I sank down by the door, hollowed out, and I don't know how long passed before a foul-smelling liquid was dumped over my head.

Vittoria appeared out of nowhere, smiling with a taunt.

"Adriana, does my son's piss taste good? Was it a pretty sight, Dominic losing himself in my body?"

So she'd meant for me to see it all along.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Look at you now. Your son's dead, and you're limping on one leg. If I were you, I'd have put a bullet in my own head long ago. What's the point of living?"

"Even if you sealed the alliance and carried his child, so what? For me and my baby, he still smothered your son and made sure you can never bear another."

She laughed, a half-beat too fast, her fingers drifting to the hollow of her own throat. "I've even got the recording of your son dying. Want to see how that little face went from red to purple? It's quite the show."

I stared hard at her phone screen, watching my child suffocate to death, inch by inch.

My whole body shook without stopping. How could she speak of murdering a child as though it were nothing at all?!

I raised my hand high, but Vittoria pulled a dagger and dragged it hard across her own chest.

Blood seeped through her blouse, the dagger clattered to the stone, and she burst into a scream.

The next second, someone shoved me hard to the floor.

Dominic held Vittoria in his arms and whirled on me, roaring.

"Adriana, have you lost your mind?!"

Before I could get a word of explanation out, Vittoria was already sobbing.

"Dominic, I was afraid it would wound Adriana to see me nurse Matteo, since she's his mother, so I came to explain it to her. But she said I was trying to steal her child, and she was going to cut off my breasts so I could never nurse him again."

"Sob, sob, I only felt sorry for Matteo going hungry, my heart ached for the baby, that's all. How could she treat me like this?"

Dominic looked at me, his face dark, the whole room gone still around him the way it always did when the Don's temper turned.

"You're the one who took that fall on the stairs and broke your leg. That's why things ended up like this, so why take it out on Vittoria?"

"You're not a fit mother. You took the medicine, you can't nurse the child, and Vittoria was good enough to step in for you. What gives you the right to raise a hand to her? Just because you don't love your own blood, no one else is allowed to?"

I'm not a fit mother? I don't love my child?

The tears broke loose, and I screamed at him in fury.

"I'm not a good mother, then what are you? Do you dare tell me why I went down those stairs, where my child actually is, and what that medicine really was?"

Dominic's brow drew tight.

"Matteo is sleeping soundly in his room, of course, and that medicine is only for the pain in your leg. You know all of this. Don't you?"

"As for the stairs, that was your own carelessness, plain enough. A house full of soldiers and servants, and somehow you're the only one who got pushed? You're useless, and you still find the nerve to bloody Vittoria. You're a mother yourself. How do you stomach hurting another? Apologize to her. Now."

Right. A house full of people, and I was the only one who got pushed.

Watching him stand there so righteous, so certain, I suddenly laughed.

This was my husband. The Don of the Falcone Family. A liar down to the marrow. A murderer.

I picked the dagger up off the floor, and with all the strength I had left I cut across my chest, a dozen strokes, until the blood soaked through the whole of my shirt.

Dominic went rigid.

"Adriana, what are you doing? Stop. Stop it, now."

I let the dagger fall and looked at him, flat and cold.

"You're right, Dominic. One shouldn't hurt a mother. So I'm atoning to your sweetheart. Is that sincere enough for you?"

With that, I turned and walked away.

Watching the blood pool at my feet, watching my staggering back, he moved to come steady me. But Vittoria's arms had already gone around his neck.

"Dominic, it hurts so much. Take me to the Family's clinic, please? We can't let our little Matteo go hungry."

He wrestled with it for a moment, the silence stretching thin between us. Then in the end he scooped Vittoria up and carried her off in the opposite direction from me.

A few hours later, his call came through.

"Adriana, did you see to the wound? Don't worry, I had one of the doctors put a salve on Vittoria that won't touch her milk. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did today."

"But the doctor says that medicine you took doesn't sit right with nursing. Vittoria has plenty of milk, and the formula simply isn't as good for him. Matteo still needs her. So I'm looking after her a little, to show the Family's gratitude. Don't take it to heart."

I said flatly, "I'm fine. Take good care of her. Don't let the child go hungry."

"I knew my wife understood things best. I had a word with my mother too. Concetta won't trouble you again."

"You gave the Falcone name a son. The credit is yours. Two nights from now I'll throw you a celebration, and make everything up to you at the same time. Just wait for me like a good girl."

The local station ran it all night. The Don of the Falcone Family, moved to fury for the woman he loved, chartering a helicopter through the dark to bring in a dozen of the country's finest specialists, all for one small cut on his mistress.

I got out the iodine and the clotting powder and dressed my own wounds, rough and quick, my hands steady in a way that frightened me more than shaking would have.

The next day, Dominic still didn't come home. I gathered up every last thing that was mine, packed it all, and gave it away.

And the alliance pact I had once treasured beyond all reason, the paper that had bound my bloodline to his before the whole Family, I tore into scraps and dropped in the trash.

At noon on the third day, he sent word.

"Adriana, I'm finished here. I'm heading to the hotel first to see how they've dressed the venue. I'll send my man to bring you this afternoon."

In truth, at that very moment, he was holding Vittoria's hand, little Matteo cradled in his arm, moving through every high jeweler in the arcade.

Soaking in the envious looks, the murmured blessings of every clerk.

"The Don truly does treasure his wife and son. There's my quota met for the next twenty years. And what a picture the three of them make."

"But I heard the Don booked the cheapest package at the hotel today. Something about celebrating his wife giving him the child."

"You've got it wrong. A man this lavish with his woman, booking something that cheap? See that necklace at her throat? The Don snapped it up for her only this morning. It could buy that hotel ten times over."

And all of it was seen by me, standing on the floor above, a new suitcase in my hand.

I didn't answer him again. I found a courier who worked the city, gave him the papers severing the alliance and the several documents that went with them, and told him to carry them to the banquet venue later.

Once that was done, I put on dark glasses and went straight for the airport.

A few hours later, Dominic finally finished at the jewelers with Vittoria and little Matteo and went on to the hotel.

Only to be told that I still hadn't come.

He checked the time. Already an hour past the meet we'd set, and something in it sat wrong with him. I was never late for anything of his.

Just as he was about to call and ask, his right-hand man came rushing across the room, a stack of documents in his grip, his voice frantic in a way no made man's voice was ever meant to be.

"Boss, there's a problem. Your wife is gone. Someone just had these delivered."