Thrown off balance, I went down hard against the cold parquet, the weight of my swollen body folding beneath me like something discarded. The fall knocked the breath from my lungs. I tried to rise, to gather what was left of my dignity, but my body had become a stranger to me. Every motion was slow, pitiful, the struggle of a creature too heavy for its own limbs. The private room of the social club closed in around me, all dark velvet and gold sconces, the air thick with cigar smoke and the sweet rot of spilled wine.
The room erupted into laughter at my expense. It rolled through the men lounging on the leather banquettes, soldiers and hangers-on, made comfortable by liquor and by their boss's permission to be cruel.
"Lorenzo, doesn't your wife look like a turtle flipped on its back?"
"A fat turtle, at that. Hahaha." Glasses clinked. Someone slapped a knee.
My eyes burned with unshed tears. Embarrassment surged through me, hot and total, a humiliation that lived in the marrow. But before I could even name the feeling, a sharp pain shot through my stomach, low and deep, a blade twisting where no blade was.
A warm, wet sensation spread beneath me and I looked down in alarm.
The carpet under me was soaked, dark and spreading.
This can't be...
Panic seized me, swallowing the shame whole. I instinctively reached out for Lorenzo, my fingers grasping at the empty air between us, at the man who had once sworn his protection over my body in front of an altar.
"Lorenzo, please take me to the hospital right now!"
"My water broke!"
The haze of liquor seemed to lift from his eyes all at once, the drunken sheen burning away under something colder, sharper. The room fell quiet by degrees, the laughter dying as the men read the shift in the air the way they'd been trained to. He stood up in a sudden, ungainly panic, and for one fragile instant a flicker of regret crossed his expression, the ghost of the man who had married me.
"Don't be afraid, tesoro. I'll take you to the hospital right away." His voice cracked at the edges, almost human.
But before he could move, before that mercy could harden into action, Gianna's mocking voice cut through the tension like a wire pulled taut across the room.
"I really envy Mrs. Castellano." She let the name drip from her painted mouth like poison. "No matter what lies she tells, Lorenzo always believes her without question."
Lorenzo shoved off the white hands she had wound around his waist, his voice gone cold and sharp as a thrown knife. "Get away from me. If anything happens to my wife, it'll be on your head."
Gianna collapsed onto the sofa with exaggerated delicacy, a wounded little performance for an audience that adored her. Despite his harsh words, she persisted, undeterred, her foot clad in red silk sliding up to brush against his calf with a slow, deliberate flirtation. Her fingers drifted to the diamonds at her throat, the necklace he had given her, and she clutched them as she spoke, a talisman for a status she clutched at and never truly owned.
"Lorenzo, don't you see?" Her voice softened into something sweetly reasonable, the most dangerous thing in the room. "Mrs. Castellano just got overexcited and wet herself. How could her water break at only seven months? Her due date isn't even close."
The words settled over the men like a verdict, and one by one they took up the song. They clicked their tongues and shook their heads with theatrical disgust, the cruelty contagious now that someone had given it permission.
"I've heard pregnant women have incontinence. So that's what it looks like."
"She can't even control her own water. No wonder Lorenzo found someone else."
Lorenzo, who had just reached for me, who had half-bent toward the woman bleeding her child onto his floor, froze. I watched it happen. I watched the calculation move behind his eyes, the way he weighed my pain against the laughter of these men, against his own pride sitting exposed in front of his crew. His initial panic gave way to a long, slow exhale of relief, as though Gianna had handed him a reason not to care, and he had seized it gratefully.
His hand drifted up and smoothed his slicked hair back from his brow, palm pressing flat against it, salvaging the dignity she had threatened in front of the room.
The pity in his eyes curdled. It turned to anger, and the anger curdled into disgust, the contempt of a man looking at something beneath him. Without a single word, he reached for a nearby pillow and hurled it at me where I lay broken on the wet floor, the soft impact somehow worse than any blow, the casual dismissal of it landing harder than a fist ever could.
