The nurse told him, "It's a boy."
Dante's face flickered with shock. He recovered fast, the way a man does when he has spent his life never showing the first thing he feels. "Arrange a blood test," he said. "As soon as it can be done."
The words struck like a slap in the air.
Nonna Falcone, who had just returned from a call in the corridor, heard it clearly. Her face darkened, and the whole floor seemed to go quiet with her, the way a social club does when the wrong man walks in.
"Dante! Your wife has just given you a son, and this is how you honor her? Are you even a man of blood?"
Afraid of truly angering the woman who kept the old codes, he pulled back, awkward. "I was only joking."
I heard everything.
But I didn't get angry.
Why would I? I had known all along that he doubted the child was his.
Even though I'd explained more times than I could count that the child had been made from his own blood, he never believed a word of it.
Eventually I stopped wasting breath trying to convince him.
Nonna ushered him into the room, then left us alone behind the closed door.
He stood at a distance, not bothering to come near, as though I were some outsider brought in off neutral ground. I did not care either.
The silence in the room was thick and oppressive.
After a long pause he finally opened his mouth, and what came out was still nothing kind. "You wanted this child. Don't expect me to raise it."
As he said it, he watched my face, hunting for something there.
I smiled faintly. "Nonna's already brought in the best. The child will be looked after."
His brows drew together, displeased. "Don't think you can use this baby to bind me to you. I won't—"
"It's fine," I interrupted, calm. "Do whatever you want. Nonna will see to the child. You won't be troubled."
My answer seemed to catch him off guard. He pressed his lips into a thin line and, for a moment, said nothing.
I knew why he was surprised.
When we were first bound together, I had told him that if we ever had a child, I wanted to give them a whole family, one full of love, the kind I never had growing up under another man's roof.
But now?
I had no expectations of him left at all.
He opened his mouth to say something more, but his phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen, hesitated for the space of a breath, then stepped out to answer it.
Even through the door I could hear the sugared voice on the other end.
"The baby isn't even yours. Why waste your night on her? I want to go to the concert. I want you to take me..."
He went out to answer the phone and never came back.
While I stared at the door he had walked through, another mother-to-be passed my room, held up by her husband.
"Do you think the baby will have your face or mine?" she asked, playful.
"Yours, of course. Beautiful, like you," he teased, and she laughed.
The woman laughed the way her husband coaxed her to, and he laughed with her. His eyes held on her for a moment, and every move he made was careful, afraid the ground might rise up against her.
Look at them, spilling over with happiness.
I was envious.
If there were someone who could love me, how good would that be?
Lost in the thought, I was pulled back by the phone buzzing on the bedside table.
[Fifty thousand dollars has been credited to your account.]
I read the message again.
It said: [From Nonna.]
I steadied myself and decided not to send it back. After all, I had earned it, in blood and in silence.
After a few days in the hospital, Nonna brought me back to the compound to recover.
She gave me her word that the day my confinement ended would be the day she used her own authority to release me from the Family bond, from him.
With that word from the one person whose word could not be argued, the restless ache in my chest finally began to settle. For a moment I pressed my thumb to the bare place on my left hand where a band no longer sat, and made myself say nothing.
That night, the woman who had run the orphanage suddenly called.
She said she had found my true blood, my parents. But they had died a long time ago.
They had left me a letter. And a key.
