I cut the voice on the other end mid-sentence, pressing my lips together until the skin went white.
"Just give me a few more days."
The words barely left me before I heard the door. Dante stepped back into the private recovery suite, his overcoat still carrying the cold bite of the corridor and the faintest trace of Turkish tobacco from the sitting room down the hall. The Family-controlled clinic was quiet at this hour, the kind of silence that only money and fear could buy, and the soft click of the latch sounded as loud as a round being chambered.
He noticed. I could feel it. The faint smile at the corner of my mouth, one he hadn't seen in a long time, and something tightened in his chest for no reason he could name. His gaze lingered on my face a beat longer than usual, the silver saint medal materializing between his knuckles as if summoned by instinct, rolling once, twice, catching the sterile overhead light.
But he'd just promised Nina he'd come right back and sing a lullaby for her and the baby. The medal stilled. He pocketed it without ceremony.
So there was no time to ask who I'd been talking to.
He probably assumed it was my cousin, the one who visited the compound sometimes. After all, since marrying into the Vittori name, the only people left in my social circle were female relatives, women deemed harmless enough to pass the front gate without a soldier escort.
He picked up his leather folio of documents and said without looking back: "Lucia, something came up at the club. I'll come by tomorrow."
Tomorrow. The day after. The day after that. He never showed.
But thanks to mutual acquaintances, videos of him and Nina kept landing on my phone. He took her to feast-night dinners at the social club. To private gatherings in the backrooms of Vittori-owned restaurants where capos brought their wives and the wine cost more than most people earned in a month. Like some lovesick boy in a brand-new arrangement, desperate to introduce her to everyone whose respect he commanded.
The day I was discharged, Dante posted a nine-photo grid on social media. Sunset light. Him standing in a hot-air balloon, cradling Nina's flushed face in both hands, kissing her like the world was watching and he wanted it to.
I left a comment: Wishing you both a baby soon and a love that lasts forever.
Ten minutes later, Dante called. I didn't pick up.
Half an hour later, having completed the discharge paperwork alone, I was standing outside the obstetrics wing of the clinic when I saw them. Dante and Nina. Two of his soldiers waited by the far wall like dark furniture, hands folded, eyes politely elsewhere. The corridor smelled of antiseptic and the sweet, expensive perfume Nina wore like a flag.
I heard the young nurse at the reception desk say to Nina: "Mrs. Vittori, your husband really dotes on you. Every time you come in, he's right here the whole time. During your ultrasounds, he's even afraid the coupling gel will be too cold, so he warms it up in his hands himself before he lets us use it on you."
Every pregnant woman in earshot looked at them with open envy. The Don of the Vittori Family, his hand resting at the small of his mistress's back, tender as any civilian husband, as though the blood he moved through the world had nothing to do with him here.
My hand drifted to my stomach without thinking. I remembered. There had been a child here, once.
The day of the car accident, bleeding, losing the baby, I'd called Dante on video through my tears. Nina had answered. Completely naked. Her tongue had wet her lower lip, slow and deliberate, before she spoke.
"Mrs. Vittori, Mr. Vittori lost a game to me, so right now he's handcuffed to the bed taking his punishment. Is there something you needed him for?"
I hadn't said a word. Just hung up.
Less than a minute later, Dante called back himself. He had Nina tucked against him, her eyes red with feigned hurt, and he tore into me, calling me petty and pathetic beyond belief. He'd also said: "An idiot who can't even keep her own child alive. I'm genuinely curious what you're actually good for. Honestly, Lucia, you might as well have let that truck finish the job."
I pulled myself back to the present. My thumb found the bare place on my ring finger and rubbed once, a motion so small no one in that corridor would have caught it. I was about to slip away when Dante walked over, his expression cold, the saint medal nowhere in sight.
"What are you standing there staring for?"
I dropped my gaze, instinctively explaining myself. "I wasn't following you. I really just ran into you by chance. Sorry to bother you."
"Wait."
The word left Dante's mouth with a frown, and a flicker of jealousy crossed Nina's eyes. She tightened her arm around his and smiled at me, her tongue touching her lower lip just before the last phrase left it.
"Mrs. Vittori, I'm so grateful you gave blood for me. If it weren't for you, I'd probably still be dizzy right now. Dante, please, let her ride home with us? Pretty please?"
Dante tapped the tip of Nina's nose with an indulgent smile. "The world's sweetest little mama-to-be. Whatever you say goes."
I'd been planning to head back to the compound for my things anyway, so I didn't refuse Nina's "kindness." One of the soldiers opened the rear door of the armored black sedan without a word, eyes lowered, and I climbed in.
Inside the spacious car, the leather seats still held the ghost of Dante's cologne and something sharper underneath it. It didn't take long before I found exactly what Nina wanted me to find: a pair of lace underwear wedged in the seat gap, the stain still damp.
"Oh my! How is this still in the car? Dante, didn't you tell me you already got rid of it?"
