Three hours before the wedding, my betrothed sent word that he would not be coming to collect me. Instead, he turned his car around and bound himself to Carmela Greco under the eyes of a priest, the alliance contract signed and sealed.
I sat through the murmurs of the gathered families, every whisper a small blade. Then the heir-apparent of the Falcone bloodline, Lorenzo Falcone, pushed open the doors of the hotel ballroom.
He came with the most extravagant convoy the territory had ever seen, black cars stretching down the street like a funeral procession for someone else's pride, and he laid before me one thousand and one roses. He confessed, in front of every made man and matriarch present, that he had loved me in silence for years, that marrying me had been his quietest prayer. Moved by it, by the way he had pulled me out of that humiliation while the whole room watched, I nodded and accepted him on the spot.
In three years of marriage, I lost seven children, and at last I carried again.
Lorenzo was overjoyed. He pulled me into his arms and turned me through a single slow step, as if we were dancing in an empty cathedral, and with all the tenderness in his voice he told me to rest. He swore he would treasure me and the child with his life.
At three months along, I overheard him speaking with the Family physician behind the study door.
"It's done, the same as before. The drug that empties a womb has been folded into her milk."
"I don't follow your reasoning. If Carmela can give you a son, why not let your wife carry one to term?"
Lorenzo laughed, low and without any joy in it.
"The Don's law is plain. Whichever of us sires an heir first inherits the seat. Matteo is barren, though he doesn't know it yet. If I already have my own blood ready to claim it, why should I let Carmela's son go without?"
So every word he had ever poured into my ear was a lie. If that was how it stood, then I would go.
……
"You understand what you're throwing away. Not only the seat at the head of the Family, but the family you might have built with your own wife. Seven children you could have raised at your own table."
"You've had me forge Matteo's bloodline records for years. He still has no idea he can't father a child. But if Carmela bears this one and it can never even call you father, is the whole bloody business worth it?"
Lorenzo's face shifted, something soft and grieving moving through his eyes.
"And what of it? They wouldn't let me marry Carmela back then. So I'll see to it she's happy every day she has left, and no one takes that from her. Not even the child Adriana and I will have together."
The physician hesitated, then lowered his voice to something close to warning. "But your wife has already lost seven. If she loses this one too, I don't believe she'll ever conceive again."
Lorenzo pressed his lips together. After a long silence he said, "It doesn't matter. I'll provide for her the rest of her life, whatever comes."
The veins rose on the back of my hand where I gripped the study door. I was so angry that my whole body trembled. I turned the plain band on my finger once, slowly, the way I always did when I was afraid and deciding to move.
Before he could sense me there, I slipped back to our bedroom and sank to the floor in a daze. All this time I had believed it was my own weak body that had cost me seven children in three years.
Falcone ago, the old Don had set the terms in front of the whole household. Whether it fell to Lorenzo or to Matteo, whichever heir produced a son first would inherit the seat and rise to the head of the Falcone Family.
After so many losses in so short a span, my health had crumbled. Yet I never let a complaint pass my lips. I only blamed myself, drowning in guilt, certain I was the stone tied to Lorenzo's ankle, dragging him down from everything he was meant to claim.
But in the end, all my pain and sorrow had been built on a lie.
Lorenzo had kept me from asking too much. He had insisted, every time we were together, that nothing come between us. He had always soothed me, always reassured me, and with each loss my body grew weaker, my health falling away piece by piece.
I understood now. To Lorenzo, my body and the seven children I had buried were nothing more than obstacles strewn across Carmela's road to happiness.
"Adriana, why are you sitting on the floor?" His voice broke through the silence as he came into the bedroom. He crossed to me at once and eased me to my feet, his face drawn with concern.
"It's nothing," I said quietly, forcing a thin smile. "Just a little sickness from the baby."
He rubbed my back, his touch light and careful. "Tesoro, you push yourself too hard. The next time you feel unwell, you call me. It cuts me to think of you suffering alone."
"You've barely slept since the pregnancy. Once this little one arrives, I'll scold them properly for not looking after their mother better."
"Here. Drink this. It'll settle you."
I looked down at the milk, and a grief swelled in my chest. Would there even be a next time?
Before every one of my losses, he had been just as attentive. From the late-night plates he prepared himself to the fruit he cut into the shapes I liked best, his care had always felt so real.
