Both of their faces glowed with happy smiles.
I dragged the mouse and found the last photo.
The date on it was a few months back, at some Family-controlled clinic where names went unrecorded and doctors kept omertà.
Bianca Falcone and Lorenzo Bianchi were locked in a tender embrace.
On the wall behind them, the banner stood out sharply.
"Congratulations, you're about to become a father!"
Looking at that photo, my heart sank into the abyss.
That day, Lorenzo had said he was going to meet an allied Family about tribute. With nothing to do, I'd offered to come along.
But he'd laughed and turned me down, saying the man across the table was old blood, a real lecher, and no place for a Don's wife.
If I came, he said, the sit-down would collapse.
I believed him.
Only now did I understand. He hadn't been sitting across a table from any capo. He'd made an appointment with Bianca to plant a forged bloodline inside my own name.
I closed the laptop and walked out of the study.
I stood on the balcony of the Estate, letting the cold night air wash over me the whole night through. Below, an enforcer moved along the garden wall, his cigarette a small red eye in the dark, and even the dogs had gone silent.
When the sky began to pale at the horizon, I finally made my decision.
This marriage, so perfect on the surface, I didn't want it anymore.
Lorenzo Bianchi, I didn't want him anymore either.
After we got up, Lorenzo dressed while reminding me.
"Adriana, don't forget it's the Christmas sit-down tonight."
"My parents have been preparing that dinner for the whole famiglia for a long time."
"Whatever you do, don't be late."
I sat on the couch, saying nothing.
As he was leaving, he kissed my forehead.
"I'm going to the office to take care of a few things. Come by this afternoon and we'll head home together."
"Also, I've got a surprise waiting for you. Make sure you check for it."
After Lorenzo left, I started packing my bags.
At noon, the surprise he'd prepared arrived, carried in by a soldier who set it down and stepped back with lowered eyes.
The newest Patek Philippe women's watch, along with a lavish spread sent from one of the Family's five-star hotels.
"My woman deserves to be spoiled by me, of course."
That was the line Lorenzo had said most often in our seven years of marriage.
Looking at the watch resting quietly in its exquisite box, my chest ached and swelled with something bitter.
I raised my eyes to the huge wedding portrait on the wall.
In the photo, Lorenzo nestled against me, his face full of happiness.
But deep in his eyes, there was always a trace of melancholy he couldn't shake.
The old me had mistaken it for the weight a man carries when he takes a wife and binds two bloodlines together.
Only now did I understand. It was the sorrow of a man who hadn't been able to marry the woman he loved.
I forced myself to steady my emotions and called my Consigliere-for-hire, telling him to prepare the papers dissolving the alliance pact.
I'd originally booked passage abroad for today, but in the end I rescheduled it to tomorrow.
Because I'd promised Lorenzo I would go home with him tonight for the sit-down.
A person should never break their word. That was what my father taught me.
Thinking of my father, the old Don, my heart felt as though an invisible hand had clenched around it, aching faintly.
Before I was even old enough to understand things, my mother died on a rain-slicked road they always called an accident.
My father raised me all on his own, and never once let another woman near the Valente name.
No matter how hard or exhausting the life got, the thought of taking a new wife never once crossed his mind.
Because he had promised to love only my mother, in this life, and never to let his heart change.
That afternoon, I arrived at the Bianchi Family's tower.
The moment I walked through the doors, men straightened at their posts, and I heard the familiar whispers ripple around me.
"Signora's here to see the Don again."
"They really are so in love."
"Of course. There was a poll in one of the society pages that named the Signora and the Don one of the ten most enviable couples in the Territory."
"They were promised to each other as children, so after seven years their bond is still as strong as ever."
"He's the most feared man in the harbor, she's the most beautiful. The child they have is bound to be gorgeous."
"By then the three of them together, that's what real happiness looks like."
"Sigh. We're all women, so how come I never got a life as good as hers?"
"Just look at the watch on her wrist. It's the newest Patek Philippe, worth a small fortune."
