Then Katarina’s face lit up with joy as she pressed a hand to her lower belly.
“The doctor says I’m with child. I was so eager to see you that I just…”
“Please don’t be so harsh with me, darling. You’re scaring me.”
Ermanno stood frozen. A long moment passed before he spoke again, his voice noticeably softer.
“You’re pregnant? Then why aren’t you resting at the safehouse instead of running around? What if something happens to you?”
Katarina gazed up at him with glistening eyes, her red lips pushed into a pretty pout. “I just couldn’t wait to share the good news with you… Darling, won’t you spend the day with me? Please?”
Ermanno refused, his tone clipped. “I promised Gioia I’d be with her today.”
But Katarina wasn’t giving up. A flush crept across her cheeks as she leaned in close, whispering something against his ear.
“Don’t you miss me at all…”
Ermanno’s restraint crumbled. He pulled her into his arms and squeezed her body against his, letting out a low, rough laugh. “You little temptress.”
“Same rules. Don’t leave any marks.”
I watched every shameless second of it, and it felt like a blade twisting between my ribs.
In all our years of marriage, he had only ever been composed and dignified in front of me. The Don, measured and controlled, restrained even in our marriage bed.
I had never once seen him like this.
Ermanno helped Katarina into the back of the black sedan with exaggerated care. The driver pulled away from the curb, but the car didn’t get far. It idled at the end of the block, the tinted windows fogged from the inside. They couldn’t even wait.
I don’t know how long it lasted. Eventually the sedan pulled forward again and merged into traffic.
I followed them the entire way. I watched Ermanno slide an elegant gold pin through her tangled hair and twist it into place. I watched them walk arm in arm through the old neighborhood, past the social clubs and the bakeries where men who answered to him looked the other way. I watched them sit at a corner trattoria and share a single plate of pasta, his hand covering hers on the red-checked tablecloth.
At last they climbed back into the sedan, laughing, and the car turned toward the highway heading out of the city. I looked up and recognized the direction. The safehouse.
So Ermanno could be this tender, this attentive, with another woman after all.
I stared until my eyes burned. Only then did I look away and give the order to my driver.
“Take me home.”
“And not a word about today. To anyone.”
On the ride back to the compound, I couldn’t stop seeing it. Katarina’s hand resting on her belly, that soft, glowing smile.
And then I thought of the fertility-suppressing poison Ermanno had been slipping me for three full years, disguised as protective medicine, and the grief was so thick I couldn’t breathe.
Before today I had still been lying to myself. Even if Ermanno had deceived me about the medicine, it didn’t mean he felt nothing for me. Maybe he simply didn’t want children.
But just now, the way he’d looked at Katarina’s belly. The way his voice had changed. He cared about that child.
I remembered something he’d said before our wedding. “Only two people who truly love each other should bring a life into this world together.”
He had never loved me. Not from the very beginning. That was why he’d done everything in his power to keep me from carrying his child.
But if he felt nothing for me, why bother with the lie? Why keep it going for so many years?
I drifted back to our rooms like a ghost and threw every last thing connected to him into the fireplace.
The lovebird folding screen he’d given me. The rare books he’d hunted down from every corner of the city, first editions tracked through dealers and old debts called in. The countless letters we had written together, line by line, in the early years when I still believed.
I watched them curl and blacken, inch by inch, until there was nothing left. Only then did the pressure in my chest ease, just slightly.
No. Not enough. How could I have forgotten?
I stormed into Ermanno’s study like a woman possessed and found it on his desk, right where it always sat. The journal.
He had started it the day we met. Every little thing I liked, every habit, every preference, collected drop by drop over the years. By now it was thick as a fist.
I opened the yellowed pages, and every word made my eyes swell with pressure.
Gioia has a sweet tooth and hates sour flavors. The kitchen must prepare a sweet dish with every meal.
Gioia gets cold easily. Have the fireplaces lit in her rooms by September.
Gioia is afraid of the dark at night. She likes to fall asleep in my arms.
I love Gioia so much, so much, so much. Remember: never let her cry.
