A Marriage Written in Blood, Ended in Silence

On the day of our alliance union, what had he done? He had chosen to keep company with the woman he'd loved before me, because she was at odds with the capo she'd been wed to. On the anniversary of our vows, he had left me alone in the estate to go to her, because a storm had her "frightened." On my birthday, when she sent word that she'd risen in her own Family's ranks, he had toasted her instead of me.

Every feast day, every saint's day the Family observed, Lorenzo tried to keep some impossible balance, sending tribute to me and to her in the same breath, as though devotion were a thing that could be split evenly between two women and survive the division.

I had brought it to him more times than I could count. He always swore on his blood it would not happen again. And yet here we were, the same wound reopened, and each time he reopened it he called me petty for bleeding. The truth was, the finest moment we had ever shared was the night he asked for my hand.

That night had been something close to madness. He had taken me up to Skyspire Peak, far above the lights of the territories that men killed each other over, where the stars hung so low I could have closed my fist around one. Beneath that black canvas he had slid a ring onto my finger, his face graver than I had ever seen it, his vows spoken like an oath sworn over a knife. It was the only time he had ever looked at me as though I were the whole of his world. He had spared nothing for that one moment. Everything after had been the slow accounting of what came due.

When Lorenzo noticed I had not answered him, the phone in my hand began to buzz against my palm. I let it ring twice before I lifted it.

"Tesoro," he said, his voice smoothed into that velvet the Family men used when they wanted something to go quietly. "I've reserved a private room. Everyone wants to make their apologies to you in person. Don't make a scene."

I twisted the band on my finger once, slow, and kept my voice as flat and unbothered as still water. "Is Vittoria coming?"

"Of course," he said, as if there were no other possible answer, as if her presence were the natural order of things.

"Fine, then," I replied. "I'll come with you tomorrow."

If apologies were to be made, they had best not be owed to me alone.

The next day, when Lorenzo's car rolled up to the gate to collect me, Vittoria was already settled in the passenger seat. She turned and offered me a smile that wore the costume of embarrassment. "Sorry, Adriana. I get carsick. It's the pregnancy, you understand. I had to sit up front."

I gave her the faintest curve of my mouth in return. "Of course."

There had been a time, before the word severing had ever entered my private thoughts, when I might have felt something twist in my chest to see the woman my husband had loved first riding beside him. But that nerve had gone dead in me now. Whatever the two of them arranged between themselves no longer reached me.

It was almost amusing, in the cold way that things become amusing when they have stopped being able to hurt you. In Lorenzo's car, the sickness always demanded the seat at his side. In any other man's car, she had never once complained of it, and would fold herself into whatever place was left.

By the time we reached the restaurant, a discreet front the Family kept for sit-downs that needed walls and no witnesses, all of Lorenzo's crew had already gathered, waiting on us. Dante came to me first. He greeted me, took my arm, and steered me into the chair beside his own. "Adriana. Let me be the first to make it right."

But there was no contrition in the set of his mouth. The words had the shape of an apology and the weight of a warning. Once the rest had taken their seats, he poured for me himself and announced he would drink to atone for his offense. He lifted the glass, threw it back in one motion, and began.

"You know me. I never weigh a word before I let it loose, so don't carry it. I'll be honest with you. I never once thought you were fit to stand at his side, not in this Family." He turned his face away from me as he said it, the small habitual contempt he'd never bothered to bury. "But he wants you. So I'm here to stand behind him."

"Thank you," I said. "I suppose."

He poured again, drained the second glass. "And this one's for what came out of my mouth that day. My mistake."

The instant he set the glass down, the rest of Lorenzo's soldiers fell over themselves to follow, each man offering up his own clumsy version of regret. Gino slapped his open palm against the table, the crack of it carrying his approval before he'd even spoken a word, and beside him Vincent glanced his way for the cue before nodding along. Watching the mood in the room loosen and warm, Lorenzo seized the moment with the ease of a man used to commanding tables, telling everyone to eat.

Then Vittoria rose, a glass of juice held delicately in her fingers. "Adriana, I want to apologize to you as well. Lorenzo and I have a history. Given how things stand now, I know I've made your position difficult."

Lorenzo cut her off at once, half-rising. "No, Vittoria. You've done nothing wrong."

Then he turned to me, and his voice dropped into that earnest register, his thumb moving slow across the knuckles of his right hand, the hand he used to enforce, now stalled, betraying which way his heart actually leaned. "Tesoro, I'm sorry. I admit I handled this badly."

"All right," I said. "But there's someone else who would very much like to hear the two of you apologize."

The door swung open then, and a sharply dressed man stepped through, the kind of man whose stillness made the whole room go quiet by reflex.

"W-why are you here?" Vittoria stammered, the glass trembling in her grip, her free hand rising to touch her collarbone as her eyes went wide at the sight of the capo she had been wed to.