Three years into our marriage, I stumbled upon a secret: my husband, Ermanno Santoro, the man who supposedly loved me to the marrow of his bones, kept a safehouse on the outskirts of the city.
I followed him there and watched with my own eyes as he slid his hand inside another woman’s clothes in full view of his captains, his gaze burning with a desire I knew all too well.
The men around them exchanged knowing looks. “You’re so desperate for her, Boss, why not just marry Katarina Ferro already? You’ve been feeding your wife that contraceptive through the doctor for years. Aren’t you just waiting for her to fail to conceive so she’ll offer to step aside herself?”
He cut them off with a frown. “Shut your mouths. And speaking of the compound, make sure Dottore keeps the dosage careful. I won’t have it damaging her health.”
After a pause, he added one more warning.
“If word of this reaches my wife, none of you will be spared.”
They all went silent, hands at their sides, and watched as he wrapped his arm around the woman and led her into the back room.
Soft moans drifted through the closed door. My heart froze over, inch by inch.
So the husband who had treated me like his whole world had already given his heart to someone else.
Fine, then. Heaven or abyss, I would make sure he never found me again.
——
I fled the safehouse in a blind panic, wandering aimlessly until the moon hung high before I finally made it back to the compound.
Rosa was waiting in the kitchen with the usual glass of warm medicine the family doctor had prescribed, ready for me to drink.
The faint metallic tang of blood hit my nose, and my thoughts drifted far away.
After our wedding, the family doctor had examined me and declared my constitution too weak to conceive easily.
Ermanno refused to watch me grieve. He called in specialists from as far as Chicago and Miami until one of them devised a rare remedy: medicine brewed with a man’s own blood, said to strengthen the body at its root.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he took a blade to his own chest and began brewing the tonic with blood drawn from over his heart, every single day.
I would trace the lattice of scars across his chest, my heart aching so badly I could barely breathe. I refused to waste a single drop of what his suffering had bought. So I choked down that bitter, iron-reeking medicine for three years straight, never missing a dose.
I had believed he wanted the same thing I did: a child that carried both our bloodlines.
Yet he would rather cut himself open than let me bear his child.
Ermanno walked through the door just as I sat staring blankly at the glass in my hands.
He came up behind me, rested his hands on my shoulders, and murmured, “What are you thinking about, Gioia? The medicine will go cold if you don’t drink it soon.”
I looked up at the gentle, warm man before me and let my gaze travel over him, careful not to show it.
He had changed his clothes at some point. His fingertips and hair carried a clean, freshly scrubbed scent. He must have bathed before coming home.
But no matter how meticulous he was, the faint smudge of rouge behind his ear gave him away.
The ghost of perfume clinging to his skin conjured the image of their tangled bodies, and bile rose in my throat.
“It’s nothing. I drove out past the old territory today and might have caught a chill. The medicine tastes more bitter than usual.”
A flicker of panic crossed Ermanno’s eyes.
“Past the territory? Why on earth would you go out there? It’s still freezing. Did you run into anyone?”
“No.”
I shook my head and set the glass on the table, letting my lower lip jut out in a small pout. “Do I really have to keep drinking this? It’s been years and nothing’s happened. That doctor must have been a fraud.”
The tension drained from his shoulders all at once. He pulled me into his arms and tapped the tip of my nose.
“Now, now, Gioia. Don’t be a child. Don’t you want to give your husband a son or daughter?”
He picked up the glass. “Be good. Let me feed it to you.”
His dark eyes held a tenderness deep enough to drown in. My own eyes stung red as I asked one more time, my voice barely above a whisper: “I really have to drink it?”
He blinked, then smiled softly and nodded. Spoonful by spoonful, he tipped the medicine into my mouth.
I swallowed it mechanically, one mouthful after another, the bitterness so sharp that tears pooled in my eyes.
He was that determined. He would never let me carry his child.
If he had fallen in love with someone else, he could have simply told me. I would have stepped aside. There was no need for all of this.
