Chapter 13
I grew more confused with each passing season. Word reached me in fragments the kind of
whispered intelligence that filters down even to the deep South, carried by men who didn’t know
they were carrying it. He had nearly died in the northern borderlands, caught in a botched
ambush while chasing a false lead through disputed territory. He had lost weight. He had
stopped attending Commission meetings, delegating his seat to his underboss while he tore
through state after state like a man looking for something he’d swallowed and couldn’t cough
back up.
He had already fallen for someone else. Why this relentless obsession with finding me?
He clearly adored Katarina. Why not stay with her and their child and live out his days behind the
walls of the compound, insulated by money and muscle and the particular silence that settles
over a house where no one asks questions?
2/2
11:28
After I Learned His Love Was a Lie, I Disappeared
Perhaps he was simply the kind of man who could never appreciate what was right in front of
- The kind who only wanted the hand he’d already let go of, not because he loved it, but
because the absence offended him.
pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger – bare now, the skin smooth where the
and used to sit and told myself it didn’t matter. I had Domenico. I had a small house in a
own where no one knew the Santoro name, where the loudest sound at night was the cicadas
ind the occasional freight train passing through on its way to nowhere important. I had built
something that belonged only to me.
Then one day, I was walking with Domenico at a street corner near the market – his small hand
vrapped around two of my fingers, his other hand clutching a paper bag of beignets the baker’s
vife had given him and we ran straight into each other.
The moment he saw me, his eyes lit up like something inside him had caught fire. Not joy,
exactly. Something more desperate than joy. Something closer to what a drowning man’s face
ooks like when his hand finally closes around the rope.
He was thinner. The suit was still immaculate charcoal wool, hand-tailored, the kind of fabric
hat cost more than most people in this town earned in a year – but it hung differently on him
now. His cheekbones were sharper. There was a scar I didn’t recognize along his jawline, still
>ink, not yet faded to white. He had come alone. No soldiers. No driver idling at the curb. Just
Ermanno Santoro, standing on a cracked sidewalk in the deep South, staring at me like I was the
ast door in a hallway that had been closing on him for three years.
Gioia, I finally found you.”
Gioia, I know I was wrong. Forgive me. Come back with me, please. I swear I’ll spend the rest of
ny life devoted to you and you alone.”
stared at him. A slow, mocking curve formed at the corner of my mouth
–
the kind of smile
1/2
11:28
After learned His Love Was a Lie 1 Disappeared
that has nothing to do with warmth and everything to do with the particular cruelty of watching
someone offer you the thing you once begged for, years too late.
Domenico tugged at the hem of my sleeve, tilting his little head up to look at me, his voice soft
and milky. “Mama, who is he? How does he know your name?”
–
Ermanno’s gaze dropped to the child. His mouth opened and closed several times the Don of
he most powerful family on the eastern seaboard, a man whose single word could end a life or
save one, rendered mute by a three-year-old boy holding a paper bag of beignets. His hand
noved unconsciously toward his breast pocket, fingers pressing against the fabric there, against
whatever he kept close to his chest these days. When he finally managed a single question, his
voice had lost every trace of command.
Gioia… you…”
How do you have a child?”
