Chapter 15
He was the one who had strayed. He was the one who had kept a woman in a safehouse while I
lept alone in the compound, who had let a doctor pour poison down my throat for three years
vhile I prayed every month for a child that would never come. What was the point of this
>athetic groveling now? What did he think forgiveness looked like that I would simply take his
and and walk back into that life, back through the gates of the estate, back into the silence and
he lies and the long hallways where every door hid something I wasn’t supposed to see?
—
Still, he kept his vigil at the door, day after day, until even the neighbors stopped giving him a
second look. The man in the expensive suit on the widow’s porch became just another fixture of
he street, like the mailbox or the cracked birdbath in the yard next door.
–
finally lost my patience and had my household staff drag him to the sidewalk two women
ind the old groundskeeper, which was all I had, and which was more humiliation than any
soldier or rival Boss had ever managed to inflict on Don Ermanno Santoro.
Ermanno, the moment you betrayed me, any chance we had was gone. There is nothing left to
salvage.”
Do you have any idea how revolting you look, clinging to me like this?”
And don’t forget – Katarina’s child is the one who carries your blood.”
His face crumpled with pain. Not the controlled, strategic pain of a man performing remorse for
an audience, but the raw, unguarded collapse of something structural giving way. He called out
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11.28
After I Learned His Love Was a Lie, I Disappeared
apology after apology in a voice scraped raw, repeating the words until they blurred together into
a single sound that was less language than wound – I’m sorry, Gioia, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry
– the words piling on top of each other like hands trying to hold water.
When he saw that I still wouldn’t bend, his hands fell to his sides. His fingers pressed once
against his breast pocket – that unconscious gesture, that reach toward whatever scrap of the
–
>ast he carried there – and then dropped away. He let out a long, defeated breath that seemed
o empty him of something more than air.
Gioia… what do I have to do for you to forgive me?”
Nothing. There is nothing you can do.”
slammed the door shut. The sound cracked through the quiet street like a single gunshot, and
hen there was silence.
That night, the first frost of winter settled over the town. I watched the cold gather outside
hrough the kitchen window, ice forming where water dripped from the eaves, the live oaks going
till and silver under the moon. Domenico was asleep in the next room, his breathing the only
varm sound in the house. I pressed my thumb against the bare skin of my ring finger and stood
here for a long time, not thinking, not deciding, just standing in the space between what I
vanted to feel and what I actually felt.
