Lorenzo's normally still eyes flickered with something close to panic.
"Gianna was beside herself over Sweetie, so I took her out to clear her head. She had a few too many, that's all—"
His tone softened a notch.
"Enough about that. I'll come with you to the next checkup with the Surgeon. You have my word."
There it was again.
A flimsy excuse to brush me off, then a little sweetener tossed my way, as if nothing had happened.
But Lorenzo, you'll never have to come to another checkup with me again.
"Don't bother. Let's sever the union."
Lorenzo went still for a beat, then his voice came low and cutting, humiliation curdling into anger.
"Adriana, do all you press people love blowing things out of proportion? I told you it was nothing. Do you have to make a sit-down out of it?"
"And what are you now? A clerk shuffling papers for the information network. You're about to turn thirty, carrying a child. Who else in this city would want you, besides me?"
"I'm out there cleaning up the Family's problems every single day, breaking my back for this name, not so I can come home and watch you throw a fit over nothing."
He turned for the door.
As he passed the entryway, his eye caught the corner of a document sticking out of my bag.
Death certificate. The two words were stark and unmistakable.
Lorenzo turned back, puzzled.
"Who died?"
He reached to pull it free for a better look.
Then his phone rang. Gianna's voice came through, choking helplessly on tears.
"Lorenzo, one of the puppies looks like it choked on its milk, and I've still got customers in the parlor. I can't handle it all."
"It won't die, will it? I'm so scared—"
His whole face tightened with worry.
"Don't cry. I'll be right there."
And with that, he was gone, no backward glance.
He even forgot to lock the study, the one room in the house he'd never liked me setting foot in.
Something pulled me inside, and then something under the desk stabbed at my eyes.
That year I was the most promising young reporter the network had, and I'd landed the assignment to draw out the old man who'd run the Family's clinic for thirty years. But the old man was proud and aloof, and he shut the door in my face.
After days of back-to-back nights, my blood sugar crashed and I fainted in the courtyard garden of the estate.
It was Lorenzo who picked me up. He told me the old fixer was stubborn, that once he'd made up his mind, nothing on God's earth would change it.
I dropped my head, dejected. The next second, an orange candy was tucked into my mouth.
Lorenzo gave me a playful wink.
"But I admire people who take their work seriously. So why don't you sit down with me instead?"
It was only later that I learned he was the youngest man ever made Underboss in the Marchetti Family. The Family's most trusted hand for the delicate problems no outsider could ever know about.
So many people had wanted an hour with this brilliant, dangerous star of the underworld and been turned away. He made an exception for me alone.
That was how Lorenzo and I came together.
Later, we both grew busier and busier, and Lorenzo looked at me, troubled.
"Adriana, I know earning your own name in the network is your dream."
"But there are elders in this house who can't be left without anyone to care for them. Could you step back from the work? I swear to you I'll be good to you the rest of my life."
And I knew just as well that becoming the finest fixer the Family had ever seen was his dream.
So I gave in.
I didn't walk away entirely. I moved to the quiet end of the network instead, shuffling logistics and paper. At least that way I could stay a little closer to the work I loved.
On so many sleepless nights, I'd run my fingers over my old press credentials in the lamplight.
Every time Lorenzo caught me at it, he was wracked with guilt, promising over and over that he'd be good to me.
But now, those credentials I'd treasured so dearly were being used to prop up the leg of his desk.
I opened his safe with Gianna's birthday.
On top sat a thick kraft paper envelope.
Inside were all kinds of photographs of the two of them.
Embracing. Kissing. Strolling hand in hand along a beach.
There were also receipts. The cash he'd put up to buy Gianna a house, to set up her business, to renovate the place.
Even though the kennel bled money month after month, laundered Family cash poured in to cover every shortfall, and he had to keep covering them himself.
