I stared at those lines of text until the screen dimmed and went black.
I sent nothing back.
When the darkness swallowed the last pale glow of the phone, I felt nothing shift inside me. Not a tremor. Not a crack. Nothing.
Zeno had always been like this. He liked to watch me unravel. Liked to see the jealousy claw its way up my throat, liked to watch me lose control, shatter into something desperate and small because of him, and then be forced to bow my head and surrender because I loved him.
But I was truly worn out.
So drained that I didn't even have the energy to fight him anymore.
The Matriarch had told me to give her a week. She would settle everything. The dissolution documents, the arrangements, the quiet severing of the blood pact that had bound the Morani name to the Valente name for years. I didn't have to do anything. Just wait. Just survive seven more days, and I would finally be free.
The next morning, when I woke, there was a familiar presence beside me.
I didn't know when Zeno had come back. He leaned against the carved mahogany headboard, his fingertips playing absently with a loose strand of my hair, winding it, releasing it, winding it again. A distracted, possessive gesture, the way a man might turn a rosary bead without thinking.
His other hand rested on my swollen belly. His head was lowered, dark lashes fanned against his cheekbones, as if he were truly listening for something beneath the skin.
"The baby is moving."
He smiled at me. "Wife, he's scratching me."
As if answering his father's voice, a clear, small movement pressed against his palm. Tiny but sure.
My heart ached so sharply I almost gasped. But I didn't move away.
Zeno had always been like this.
No matter how recklessly he carried on outside these walls, no matter whose bed he crawled from or whose perfume still clung to his collar, whenever he returned to me, he wore the same face. The gentle husband. The patient father waiting for his child to arrive. He would soothe me softly, pull the silk covers up over my shoulders, and when my composure cracked, he would murmur the same hollow liturgy over and over. "Wife, I'll fix myself." "Don't cry, alright?"
As long as I closed my eyes to the filth he dragged in from outside, we could keep a marriage that looked warm and proper. A beautiful lie displayed behind bulletproof glass.
But I couldn't keep doing that. And that was why I chose to walk away.
"Sit up and eat a little."
Zeno leaned down and pressed his lips to my forehead. The kiss was warm. It meant nothing.
"After we eat, I'll drive you to the hospital for the checkup. Your appointment is today, isn't it?"
At the dining table, while he watched me drink milk, Zeno suddenly chuckled. There was a testing edge beneath the sound, a blade wrapped in velvet.
"Wife, I thought you would call me last night crying. Just like when you used to catch me with someone, calling nonstop until I picked up."
He tilted his head, studying me the way he studied men across the table at a sit-down. Measuring. Calculating.
"What happened? My little crybaby suddenly switched personalities? You really don't care anymore?"
I held the cup without raising my head.
"Isn't this exactly what you've been hoping for?"
My voice stayed even. Flat as still water. "A quiet, obedient Mrs. Valente who acts like nothing ever happened."
Zeno clearly stopped. His hand paused halfway to his espresso, as if my words had caught him somewhere he hadn't armored.
Then he reached out and brushed the hair from my face, slow and deliberate, like calming a small animal that had finally stopped resisting.
"It's good you understand now. Men in our position, how could we not have obligations to manage? People to entertain?"
His thumb traced the curve of my ear. His voice dropped, intimate and sure.
"Wife, relax. No matter what, you will always be the only woman I marry. The ones outside are just passing shadows."
Passing shadows.
Those simple words landed lightly, soft and weightless, yet hard to breathe through. Like silk drawn slowly across the throat.
I suddenly thought back to many years ago.
When Zeno had first come to me, when the alliance between our families was still fresh ink on a contract and he had chosen to make it something more, he had promised that in this life, he would only love me. Stay true to me. Never turn his back on me. He had said it with the same mouth that now called other women shadows, the same hands that now touched me like an afterthought.
So promises really did wear away. To the point where even the man who made them no longer trusted his own words.
My nails pressed into my palm beneath the table. The small, sharp pain spread slowly through my hand, barely enough to keep me alert.
"Let's go."
I stood, cutting Zeno off before he could say anything else.
During the drive to the hospital, the car stayed quiet.
In the past, I would have spoken happily at times like this, chattering about the baby. What the doctor might say. Whether the heartbeat sounded strong. Only when the topic was the baby did I feel that Zeno still cared about me, still cared about this family we had built on blood and vows.
But now, I didn't want to keep pretending anymore.
And even though Zeno glanced at me several times through the rearview mirror, his dark eyes searching, he didn't say a word.
Right before we reached the hospital, Zeno's phone rang.
The voice on the other end sounded frantic, words tumbling over one another. Something about "causing trouble at the house." "Pulling someone away." "Forcing her to marry some old man from the Calabrese family."
Zeno's face didn't change at all. Not a flicker. Not a twitch.
"That's her family's issue. What does that have to do with me?" His tone was flat, bored, the voice he used when dismissing a low-level associate who had overstepped. "Didn't I tell you? When I'm with my wife, don't bring me anything else."
He ended the call and slipped the phone into his breast pocket.
A moment later, Zeno parked the black sedan at the hospital entrance, placed his hand on my belly, and spoke softly. "Baby, we're at the hospital."
I thought Zeno might still have a fragment of conscience left. Some small, stubborn piece of the man who had once promised me the world.
But after I took my number at the reception desk and turned back around, the seat beside me was already empty.
Zeno's message arrived quickly.
Something came up.
The day after tomorrow is your mother's death anniversary. I will come back for you and the baby.
Do your checkup alone today.
I laughed. A single, quiet sound, sharp enough to cut glass.
I finished every examination by myself. Blood drawn from my arm by a nurse who didn't meet my eyes. The cold gel on my belly. The ultrasound wand pressing down while I stared at the ceiling and counted the tiles. When it was done, I sat in the hallway and waited for the results, my hands folded over the swell of my stomach.
On the grapevine, word traveled fast. It always did.
That nightclub singer had posted a new photograph for the world to see.
The restaurant lighting was soft and golden, intimate as candlelight. The Zeno who should have been sitting beside me in that sterile hospital corridor was sitting across from her, his attention fixed on her face, focused and intent in a way I hadn't seen directed at me in months.
The caption beneath it read: Thanks to Zeno, I wasn't dragged off by my own mother to marry some old man from another family. I'll love him forever and stay with him.
My throat tightened. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, placed a hand on my belly, and rubbed it slowly. Gently. The way I wished someone would hold me.
"Baby."
I asked calmly, my voice barely above a whisper in that empty hallway.
"If one day Daddy and Mommy dissolve their pact... will you blame Mommy?"
