The warm, milky scent of the baby hit me, and my whole body went rigid.
But a second later, the child slipped from my arms and hit the floor hard, letting out a piercing wail.
Through the shrill crying, Dante burst into the room and shoved me aside.
I stumbled backward and watched him scoop up the baby, cradling it against his chest. He looked at me with an expression so layered it said everything his mouth didn't.
Serafina was crying beside him. "Mr. Vitale, I just wanted to let your wife hold the baby. I had no idea she would..."
Dante's voice was ice. "Rowan, Serafina is being discharged tomorrow. Since you clearly can't tolerate the children, go stay at the Westhill compound for now..."
I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted blood before I finally let go. I hadn't brought much when I left for the retreat, and packing up now was even simpler. One suitcase held everything I owned.
I sat in the empty compound, alone from nightfall until dawn. The security detail outside rotated shifts twice. I heard their boots on the gravel each time, but none of them knocked.
Maybe it was better this way. At least I wouldn't have to watch the four of them playing happy family.
The memories came flooding back.
Dante and I were promised to each other young, matched by our fathers before either of us understood what the Families expected. Married eight years. The union everyone in the five families pointed to as proof that alliances could hold.
Then came the night a rival outfit drugged him at a sit-down, and he slept with a college girl. He called me the moment he came to his senses, his voice shaking. "Rowan, I was set up! I already paid her off. She'll never show up again!"
I believed him.
But it wasn't long before the woman, Serafina Conti, appeared again. Her parents had died in an accident, and she tracked Dante down while he was drunk after a family dinner with the capos. That was the second time. The first could be called an accident. But the second?
Later, Dante was caught in a warehouse collapse during a supply run down south. It was Serafina, pregnant, who pulled him from the wreckage with her bare hands.
A life debt on top of the baby in her belly. After that, Dante could never shake her loose.
He knelt before me, sobbing. I laid out my terms.
"Dante, either we divorce."
"Or you get rid of her."
"I'm not divorcing you!" Dante grabbed me, his eyes bloodshot. "But I have to take responsibility for her..."
He wouldn't agree to a dissolution, and he wouldn't let Serafina go.
So I was the one who left. I went to a retreat house up in the mountains to clear my mind. I stayed until Serafina gave birth, and then Salvatore and Carmela Vitale ordered me home.
I pulled out my phone and typed the message I should have sent a long time ago, the screen glowing in the dark.
"Let's get a divorce."
Less than ten minutes later, I heard the front door fly open.
Dante rushed in, sweat still beading on his forehead. "Rowan! I will not agree to a divorce!"
I sat still on the sofa and let out a quiet breath. "Just let it go, Dante. I'm tired."
"I told you she would never come between us!" His voice cracked with desperation.
That was when his phone rang.
Serafina's tearful voice spilled through the speaker. "Mr. Vitale! The baby was shaken up from the fall earlier and spiked a fever. The doctor says she might need to go to the ICU!"
Dante's expression changed instantly.
He looked at me, then at the phone, and finally forced the words out.
"Rowan, I... I need to go check on them..."
My thumb pressed hard into the inside of my wrist, holding everything behind my face. I watched his panicked silhouette disappear through the door, and a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
This was my marriage. My alliance. Even my own divorce had to wait in line behind another woman and her children.
I felt the bitter curve of my own smile. "Go. The baby needs you."
He rushed out, and the draft he left behind brushed across my cheek, as if he had never been there at all.
I sat alone in the darkness, tears sliding down without a sound. Somewhere outside the compound wall, an engine turned over and gravel scattered as his car pulled away. Then nothing. Just the silence of a house that belonged to his family, not to me.
I knew he might never marry Serafina. But he would be called away like this, again and again.
Days like these, if I didn't divorce him, how much longer could I endure it? A lifetime?
