Three hours before the wedding, the man I was to marry sent word he would not be coming for me. He had turned his car around and signed the blood union papers with Gioia Russo instead.
I stood there in the hotel that fronted for the Family, swallowing the whispers of the guests, when the bridegroom's uncle, Lorenzo Falcone, pushed open the doors.
He came with the most lavish motorcade the Family had ever put on the street, presented me with nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine roses, and told me he had loved me in secret for years, that taking me as his wife had been the stuff of his dreams.
Moved that he had spared me such a loss of face before the whole Family, I nodded yes on the spot.
Three years of marriage. Seven miscarriages. And then, against all odds, I was carrying again.
Lorenzo held me and spun me in slow circles in the great room of the compound, aching and overjoyed all at once, telling me to rest and protect the child, that he would cherish me and our baby with his life.
Three months along, I happened to overhear him speaking with the Family physician outside the study.
"Don Falcone, just as the previous seven times, the drug is already in your wife's milk."
"I don't understand. Gioia carries your children to term without trouble. Why never your wife?"
Lorenzo laughed at himself, low and quiet.
"Only the one who sires an heir takes the seat of the Family. Matteo Falcone can't father a child. How could I bear to let Gioia suffer down the line for that?"
So all those vows of devotion had been nothing but lies.
If that was how it was, then I would simply leave.
——
"By doing this, you're not only giving up your claim to the seat of the Family, you're losing seven children that were yours and your wife's."
"You've had me forging young Matteo's medical records all this while. He still doesn't know he can never sire an heir. When Gioia's child is born, it won't even be able to call you Father. Is it truly worth it?"
Lorenzo's expression turned tender and wistful, the way a man's voice softens only for one woman in the world.
"What of it? Since I couldn't make Gioia mine all those years ago, I'll guard her happiness for the rest of my life. No one gets to ruin it. Not even my own child with Adriana Marchetti."
The physician hesitated. In the hush of the corridor I heard him lower his voice.
"But your wife has already lost seven. One more, and I'm afraid she may never be able to conceive again."
Lorenzo pressed his lips together. For a long moment there was only the silence of a man whose every word ends lives. Then he said,
"It doesn't matter. I'll take care of her for the rest of her life anyway."
The veins on the back of the hand gripping the study door handle stood out, trembling beyond my control. My thumb found the thin gold band on my finger and turned it, around and around.
Before Lorenzo could find me there, I fled back to the bedroom, soul scattered, and slid down to the floor.
All this time I had believed I was simply frail, that my body couldn't hold a child, and that was why I had lost seven in three years.
The old Don had long since put out the word through the Family: whether it was his son Lorenzo or his grandson Matteo, whoever first sired an heir of the blood would inherit the seat of the Family.
So many losses in so short a span had drained the life from me, and even so, I had never complained. I had thought myself a burden to Lorenzo, and carried the guilt of it like a stone in my chest.
To keep me from suspecting, he had refused every precaution, letting my health be spent, time and time again.
In his eyes, my body, my dead children, were nothing but obstacles cleared from Gioia Russo's road to happiness.
"Adriana, why are you sitting on the floor?"
Lorenzo walked into the bedroom and crossed to me at once, his face all concern, and bent to help me up.
"I'm fine. Just a little sickness a moment ago."
He rubbed my back tenderly, easing the breath back into me.
"Tesoro, you've had it so hard. Next time the nausea comes, call for me. Don't bear it alone. It breaks my heart."
"Ever since you fell pregnant you've slept so poorly. When this baby comes, I'll have to give him a good smack for not caring about his mother."
"Here, drink a glass of warm milk. It'll help you sleep."
Looking at that glass of milk, an ache rose in my chest. Would there really be a next time?
Every time before a miscarriage, he had been exactly like this, either thoughtfully fixing me something in the dead of night, or making me a bowl of my favorite fruit with his own hands.
