Unfortunately, the world I had married into was never that simple.
After dinner, out of old habit, I scrolled through my phone for a while.
Then one post stopped me cold.
It came from the account of Lorenzo's so-called "best friend."
In the photo, two wedding outfits hung side by side before a fitting mirror.
In one frame, a man stood with his fingers laced tightly through the woman's beside him.
His face wasn't in the shot, but my eyes locked on him anyway.
There was a small red mole on the side of his neck.
Lorenzo had one in exactly the same place.
And the ring mark on the woman's left finger stung my eyes until they ached.
It was the pale band a ring leaves behind after being worn for a long time.
But what I knew best was the watch on the man's wrist.
Because that wasn't Lorenzo's watch at all.
It was the birthday gift Gianna had given him.
The caption was only one short line:
【The moon I missed always comes back, to light me up one more time.】
My heart dropped.
Because I had seen that line before.
More than once, even.
I walked quickly into the study and pulled out the chair where Lorenzo sat to handle the Family's quiet business.
Sure enough, beneath the computer lay a black notebook.
I opened to the first page.
That familiar handwriting met my eyes.
Word for word.
The hand holding the notebook began to shake.
So there was no best friend getting married at all.
That account, from start to finish, had been Lorenzo's own secret profile.
The so-called wedding fitting.
The so-called helping a friend plan the day.
All of it a lie he had carefully spun to fool me.
And that seven-day trip across the water to Scandinavia was nothing more than a way to move me out of the territory.
To make it easy for him and Gianna to finally seal the blood-alliance they had put off for ten years.
I slowly closed my eyes.
Something sat lodged in my chest, blocking the breath.
After a while, I picked up my phone and messaged my oldest friend, all the way over in the old world.
【Is the made stake still open for me?】
The reply came almost at once.
【Of course.】
I drew a deep breath and kept typing.
【I'll take it.】
【And get me a consigliere. I need a severance from the Family bond drawn up.】
Once it sent, a strange weight lifted off me.
Months ago, my friend had asked me to come in on a new operation abroad.
Thirty percent of the take, no tribute of my own required to buy in.
The other two partners had agreed, every one of them.
What they wanted was my mind and the network I had built over the years.
But back then, I couldn't bear to walk away from my family.
Couldn't bear to walk away from my husband and my child.
So I had turned them down, again and again.
Only now did I see it.
The one person I truly couldn't bear to lose was myself.
If that was how things stood.
Then it was time I lived for myself, for once.
It was nearly dawn.
The sound of the door finally came from outside.
Lorenzo stumbled in.
Reeking of liquor.
Two buttons undone at his collar, his shirt a wrinkled mess.
The worst of it was the faint smudge of lipstick at the edge of his collar.
So plain he hadn't even bothered to hide it.
And the gifts he'd promised to bring me and Matteo?
Not a single one.
When he saw me sitting in the front room, he froze for a moment, then straightened his tie, laughed a half-beat too late, and came over.
"Babe, still up?"
"Were you waiting for me?"
"You wicked woman, you knew I'd been drinking and stayed up just to torment me."
He said it so easily, so warmly.
As if nothing had happened.
But in the old days.
The first thing he'd do walking through that door was always to hold me.
Now even the empty gesture came across as careless.
With that, he went straight into the bathroom.
Not long after, I suddenly heard a stifled sobbing.
It was coming from Matteo's room.
I hurried in and pushed open the door.
"What's wrong?"
"Did you have a bad dream?"
Matteo shook his head, his eyes red.
Then he handed me his phone.
On the screen was a post Gianna's daughter, Sofia Greco, had just put up.
In the photo.
Sofia sat at a pink piano, the newest tablet cradled in her arms, beaming.
The caption read:
【Thank you to the best daddy in the whole world for my custom one-of-a-kind piano.】
My breath caught.
The next second, Matteo spoke, his voice small and wounded:
"Mom."
"I've seen that piano."
"And that tablet too."
"They were in the order history on Dad's computer."
One sentence.
It shattered the last of my defenses.
Only in that moment did I finally understand why Matteo was crying.
Lorenzo always said.
Boys had to be raised lean and hard.
Said that was the only way they wouldn't grow up soft and squander everything the bloodline had earned.
So when Matteo wanted a toy, Lorenzo called it a waste of money.
When he wanted a new backpack, Lorenzo said the old one still worked.
Even the phone he carried now had once been mine.
All these years.
Almost every small wish Matteo had, I had quietly granted in secret.
And every time Lorenzo found out, he flew into a rage over how I spoiled the boy.
But now?
The flesh-and-blood son he claimed needed raising lean couldn't get a toy car without being silenced by a promise.
While the other child.
Could effortlessly receive a custom piano worth a fortune and the latest of everything.
So the so-called hard-love, lean-raising.
Had never been a way of raising a son at all.
It was just that he didn't love him enough.
I crouched down and pulled Matteo into my arms.
His small fingers found the cuff of my sleeve and held on, two fingers pressed tight to the fabric.
"It's okay."
"From now on, whatever you want, Mom will buy it for you."
Matteo buried his face against me, his shoulders shaking with sobs.
I patted his back gently until I'd soothed him to sleep.
By the time I came back to the front room.
Lorenzo had finished his shower and come out.
His hair still dripping.
He sat down beside me as if it were nothing.
I pushed down the anger churning in my chest and asked calmly:
"Didn't you promise to bring Matteo a gift?"
Lorenzo visibly froze.
Then gave an awkward little laugh.
"Had too much to drink. Forgot."
"I'll get him something next time."
He reached out to pull me into him as he said it.
His tone as entitled as ever.
"Besides, he's a boy. Boys should be raised lean anyway."
I lifted my head and looked at him.
And suddenly the man I had shared a bed with for ten years felt terrifyingly like a stranger.
