Donna leaned in, the black rosary beads sliding through her fingers, her voice dropping low as though the scheme itself required reverence.
"Once Serena carries a child, we'll simply say it came from your brother's seed, frozen before he passed. A doctor's miracle. No one will ever know the truth. It won't touch your union with Adriana at all…"
Lorenzo cut her off, his voice flat as a blade laid on velvet. "Mother. It's one thing for Adriana to make a spectacle of herself. Why are you feeding her poison?"
He turned to me, and his voice climbed. "This is nothing but a woman throwing a tantrum because I haven't laid a hand on her in years!"
I let out a cold laugh, watching him perform as if there were an audience beyond these walls he needed to convince.
What a farce. This union was beyond saving. Rotten to the marrow.
Lorenzo loved Serena. That much no mask could hide. Yet for the sake of appearances, for her precious standing in the Family, he would not dissolve our union and take her openly.
He refused to be known as the Don who cast off his wife for his dead brother's widow. So instead he did everything behind locked doors. Every betrayal, every filthy thing. And used me as the front. Their shield. Their alibi before the whole Cosa Nostra.
"What in God's name are you laughing at?" he snapped.
"Nothing," I said softly.
I pushed myself up from the bed, weak but numb, my voice light. Careless.
"It was only a passing thought. Do as you please."
Something in Lorenzo's expression shifted. His eyes burned red, fury clouding them. Except beneath the anger sat something else. Glee. A quiet, hungry satisfaction.
"Since you're feeling so generous," he said coldly, his arm curling around Serena, "I'll take you at your word."
Then, with deliberate cruelty, he made his declaration.
"I'll be taking Serena to a foreign city for a honeymoon. Somewhere far from the territory. As for you, you'll stay here and see to my mother. And while you're at it, you may as well learn to tend a woman with child. And later, the child itself."
Donna lit up as though it were Christmas dinner and the whole table had risen for her. "Oh, Lorenzo, how thoughtful. It's better this way. Adriana won't have to watch the two of you together. It would only break her heart."
Serena flushed and pressed herself into him, all false modesty and fluttering lashes, a widow playing the trembling virgin. She lifted her black-lace handkerchief to her lips, the grief arriving a beat too late, the way it always did when there was someone to see it. She made a show of shrinking back, of objecting.
Lorenzo silenced her with a kiss. Right there. In front of me.
Donna cast a careful glance my way, bracing for a reaction. I didn't flinch. I only stared, my face empty as an unlit room.
That seemed enough to settle her. "Lorenzo, perhaps just… soften it a little in front of Adriana, hmm?" she murmured gently, still watching me from the corner of her eye, the beads never pausing between her fingers.
This whole Family. What a circus of them. They truly believed I saw none of it.
By the end of the day, Lorenzo had already arranged the travel for the following week. The flight out of the territory, beyond the Family's reach.
He couldn't wait.
After the fever finally broke, I went quietly to work.
I had to gather proof. Real leverage. Enough to detonate all of it before they slipped away to their little fairy tale abroad.
That night, while Lorenzo sat late over Family business in the study, I slipped into the one place I had never been permitted to enter. His bedroom.
Five years bound to him, and I had never once crossed that threshold.
Lorenzo always said that a true, sacred union demanded boundaries. Purity of spirit. Even his bedroom had been forbidden to me. His own wife.
The room was cold and clinical. Stark gray and white, not a single human trace in it. Just like him. Distant, sterile, controlled.
I searched everything. Drawers, the nightstands, beneath the bed. Nothing.
I was ready to give up when I noticed it, tucked into the far corner of the wardrobe. A small safe, nearly swallowed by the shadow.
I tried Serena's birthday. The lock gave without resistance.
Inside was a flood of photographs. Hundreds, perhaps more. All of Serena.
The earliest were plainly stolen. Grainy shots from crooked angles, a man watching through a cracked door, a window. Then the tone changed. They became her own. Deliberate, sultry, pupils blown wide, lips parted. Her gaze full of knowing.
Disgust clawed up my throat, but I forced myself to keep looking.
Beside the photographs lay a leather-bound journal. I opened it. The first entry was dated the day Lorenzo and I met.
"Met a girl at the library today. She asked whether I loved Plato too. The way she said it almost made her feel like my sister-in-law. But I can't hold thoughts like that about Serena, can I. I need a distraction. A girl on my arm. Adriana will do."
My hands began to shake, but I read on.
"Adriana is naïve. She'll never see that she's only a tool. Every time Serena is near, I have to fight myself not to stare. Not to touch."
"Today we buried my brother. I nearly did something unforgivable in the chapel, at the graveside. Lucky that Serena was too lost in grief to notice how vile I truly am."
"Adriana keeps trying to reach me. It's pathetic. Why are women always so desperate. Serena isn't like that. She's pure. She's still keeping herself for my brother."
Tears blurred the page. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood, anything to keep from making a sound. Everything I had believed was love. Every soft word, every distant smile. All of it a lie.
I was done being their cover story.
