My childhood sweetheart, Lorenzo Marchetti, the man to whom I was promised by blood and word, asked to postpone the joining of our bloodlines one month before it was to be sealed.
He said he needed to bind himself to another woman first, in the eyes of the law.
Not because he loved her, but because she urgently needed a legal husband to secure her child's name and its claim to what little inheritance remained.
The girl had stood at his side through the years he'd spent building his crew. Now both her parents were dead, she was pregnant, and the baby's father had abandoned her. If no one covered her, she would lose everything.
Lorenzo said, “It's only paper. Once it's all settled, I'll marry you the proper way, before every Family that matters.”
But he forgot.
To wait for him, I gave up my chance to leave for schooling across the water. I stayed with him from the days when he had nothing, no soldiers, no tribute, no respect, all the way to now. I gave him the best five years of my life.
Now I'm thirty.
My parents had pressed me about the union more times than I could count, every relative and allied Family was waiting on the joining, and I couldn't afford to wait any longer.
Mother took me to the Marchetti house to demand an answer under the code.
All I got in return was one cold line from Lorenzo.
“We've already waited five years. What's one more?”
“No one but me is willing to help her.”
“Adriana Rossi, you still have parents, you have blood around you. But Gemma Volpe has nothing. All she has is me.”
In that moment, my heart finally went cold for good.
When I got home, my parents didn't tell me to keep waiting. They brokered a match for me instead.
In less than two weeks, I gave my word to that man's offer.
Fate seemed set on toying with everyone at the same table.
The day of my joining turned out to be the very same day Lorenzo and Gemma were signing their papers before the clerk.
The bridal car pulled slowly out from beneath the hotel awning, two soldiers trailing behind in a second sedan.
At a red light, we came face to face with another motorcade.
Lorenzo, in a crisp black suit, a bouquet in his hands, was on his way to escort Gemma to the county clerk's office.
Through two panes of glass, our eyes met.
The instant he saw that the bride in the wedding dress was me, he froze on the spot.
The flowers slipped from his hands, and the color drained slowly from his face. His thumb dragged once across the face of his watch, then again, faster.
……
“Mama, I'm not going to marry Lorenzo.”
Mother's hand jerked, and the teacup she was holding fell to the floor and shattered.
She stared at me, dazed, and it was a long time before she spoke. “Adriana, are you… sure about this?”
I nodded.
It was no surprise that Mother was so shaken.
Lorenzo and I had been promised for five years, and every Family we knew simply took it for granted that our bloodlines would be joined.
The invitations had long been drafted, the banquet hall booked, the portraits taken. All that remained was the ceremony next month.
But now there was less than a month left.
If I severed the promise, it meant these years of love were truly over, and it meant starting again from nothing.
At thirty, coming to know a stranger was as good as handing the rest of my life over to the dark.
I'd thought Mother would tell me to swallow it and wait a little longer.
But she only let out a long sigh.
“I always thought that Marchetti boy was where you belonged. I never imagined he'd bring this kind of shame on us.”
She took my hand, her eyes rimmed with red.
“Adriana, don't be afraid.”
“There's still a month. However tight the time, your father and I will find you a man truly worth trusting. A real Family, one whose word holds.”
My eyes filled at once.
Once, hadn't I believed the very same thing?
Lorenzo and I grew up together, our fathers seated at the same tables.
The first time we met, I was frightened of strangers and hid behind my mother, refusing to come out.
It was seven-year-old Lorenzo who ran over on his own, took my hand, and grinned with the most earnest look on his face.
“You're really pretty.”
“From now on I'll protect you. No one's allowed to bully you.”
Old man Marchetti stood nearby, teasing him with a smile.
“A real man doesn't take back his word once it's out. That's the whole of it.”
Little Lorenzo nodded hard.
“I'll do it, I swear it.”
And later, he really did.
When we were children, whenever he got his hands on something good to eat, he always set it aside for me first.
I was a wild one, ditching lessons, climbing walls, getting into trouble, and every time someone raised a hand to scold me, he'd step in front and take the blame.
I don't know when it started.
That boy who was always shielding me slowly moved into my heart.
On my eighteenth birthday, he gave me a ring he'd designed himself.
He said,
“Adriana, from now on you're the only one I'll ever marry.”
“Once I get the crew standing on its own, I'll give you a joining every Family in the city will envy.”
I believed him.
The year we finished school,
he said the business had only just found its feet, and he wanted to wait until things were steadier before we married.
The second year,
he said the crew's cash flow was at its most delicate stage, and the joining couldn't be allowed to split his focus.
The third year,
he said the deal that would make his name was almost done, and once it closed, he'd marry me in style.
The fourth year,
he said he wanted to give me the best life, so wait a little longer.
Year after year.
Until the fifth year, when we finally named a date.
Back then, I was still naive enough to think
that Lorenzo kept pushing the joining aside only because he wanted a better life for me.
It wasn't until Gemma appeared that I understood how badly I'd been wrong.
Gemma was someone I brought under our protection.
That day, on the way home, she stepped into the road against the light and was nearly struck by Lorenzo's car.
Lorenzo had been ready to smooth it over with an envelope of cash and be done.
I was the one who saw her, alone and just cast off from whatever work she'd had, with no one to lean on, and in a moment of pity I took her under the Family's wing and let her stay for the time being in an apartment held under my name.
After that, Gemma was at my side almost every day, her hand always drifting to rest flat against her belly whenever eyes turned her way.
Later, she and Lorenzo grew closer and closer too.
Lorenzo even said to me with a smile, “You're just too soft-hearted. Looking after her alone will wear you down. Let me help you carry it.”
Back then I even felt grateful.
Grateful that I hadn't misjudged the man.
But little by little, I noticed the two of them growing more and more intimate.
Working late together, eating together, taking trips out of town together.
Even the evenings that had been ours began, time and again, to turn into three.
I tried to warn Lorenzo.
“Gemma isn't blood, after all. It'd be better if the two of you kept a little distance.”
But he only frowned, his face full of impatience.
“Adriana, when did you get so small?”
“She's a young woman with no one and nothing. Isn't it only right that we look after her a bit more?”
