"Your birthday's in seven days, isn't it? I know it is. And that's exactly the day I'll take Bianca as my own before the Family. I love her. I'm not acting. I want her at my side. She won't carry the name the bloodlines recognize, but she's the only woman I'll ever call wife in my heart. You can keep the Moretti name, and live out the rest of your life on nothing but that."
"And another thing. That day, when Bianca put her foot on your belly, I saw all of it. I let her do it. That seed you're carrying, even if it's born, won't get one ounce of a father's love from me."
"Adriana Falcone. This is exactly what you and your father deserve."
Then he shoved me aside, started the car, and drove off into the dark beyond the estate gates.
I had barely staggered up off the gravel
when Lorenzo's call came through again.
His voice on the other end had settled considerably,
cold and mocking, the way it always was, the voice of a Don who'd already decided a thing and saw no need to raise it.
"Adriana Falcone, you'll arrange the ceremony yourself, seven days from now. Aren't you the gracious wife of this house? Don't you have no feelings of your own? Then go do it properly."
"You'd better put your heart into it. If Bianca isn't satisfied, I have plenty of ways to keep your father's name dragged through every gutter in the territory, day after day, with no one left to defend it."
Then he hummed a little tune and hung up.
I knew Lorenzo was capable of it. In this world a Don's whisper could bleed a man's reputation dry before sunrise.
I pushed open the door and looked at the enormous wedding portrait of us hanging in the great room,
a bitter smile pulling at my mouth.
In the photo there wasn't a trace of warmth on Lorenzo's face.
He stood rigid, a great distance between us,
and it had taken everything in me just to rest my head on his shoulder.
The space of a single hand,
and in eight years I still hadn't managed to close it.
When he took his portraits with Bianca,
Lorenzo must have been overjoyed.
I forced myself up and took down every wedding portrait in the house,
tore them to pieces in the yard, and burned them to ash, the smoke curling up past the iron fence where his men kept their silent watch.
Then I packed up my clothes and had them shipped back to the Falcone estate,
had the Family's consigliere draw up the papers to sever the union, and left them on the desk in Lorenzo's study.
Once all of it was done, I began arranging his ceremony.
For a full week,
Lorenzo never came back.
The hotel was booked, one of the Family's own legitimate fronts, the gown chosen, the order of the night set,
and every day I sent it all to Lorenzo like a soldier reporting to the man who held her life in his hand.
Still no reply.
But no furious call came in either,
so I knew Lorenzo was satisfied. Or rather, Bianca was satisfied.
Fine. All I wanted now was to walk out clean, without a war.
...
Seven days later, Lorenzo knelt on one knee before Bianca, the whole room of made men gone quiet around them.
But before he could slide the ring onto her finger,
the doors of the banquet hall were thrown open from outside,
and the Moretti matriarch, gray at the temples, pointed a shaking hand at Bianca and screamed until her voice broke.
"I will not let her through the Moretti door. The only daughter-in-law of this Family is Adriana!"
Lorenzo was angry now too.
He seized Bianca's hand and turned on his mother, demanding,
"Why? By what right? Mamma, I'll take Bianca tonight even if it kills me!"
Mavis pressed a trembling palm flat against her chest, shaking all over,
and looked at her son's furious face, weeping as she spoke.
"My boy, you ask me why? Because she and her father are the ones who put your father in the ground! Because it was me, on my knees, who begged Adriana into this house! My boy, you can't go on being this blind!"
