Bride of the Syndicate:When Love Died and I Left Him Forever

I bit down on the pain and dragged my broken leg back across the compound to the main house, one step at a time, stopping often. It took the better part of an hour.

Lorenzo was already there, Gianna tucked against him. "She actually had the nerve to go running to the Donna. She nearly frightened Gianna to tears."

"What are you standing there for? Apologize to Gianna. Now."

The pain swam black across my vision, but I gritted my teeth and bent my body low.

"I'm sorry, Gianna."

Lorenzo looked faintly surprised. In all these years under the pact, it was the first time I had ever backed down.

Even when he'd had me thrown into a cellar full of vipers, I had never bowed my head.

I'd always clung stubbornly to the same thought: why confess to something I never did?

But in Lorenzo's eyes, my standing before him, pleading through tears, was worth nothing.

Far less believable than the thin sheets of poisoned letter paper Isabella had been feeding him for years.

He was certain I was a woman who lied as easily as she breathed, who sowed discord through the whole famiglia wherever she went.

So fine. I wouldn't argue anymore.

Once I'd spoken, I turned to leave.

Lorenzo called after me. "Wait. Why is there blood on you? I thought it was only your leg."

A flick of his eyes, and the household servant beside him came to strip the heavy cloak from my shoulders.

My flat stomach lay exposed.

Lorenzo's pupils contracted. He rose and crossed the room to me. "Where is the child?!"

I lifted my head, numb. "Left behind. With the Donna."

The matriarch had said the child carried Falcone blood too, that he should stay under her roof, that someone would see to the rite and lay him properly to rest.

I hadn't even been granted the right to take him with me.

But Lorenzo misread it.

"I told you it was pointless to go crying to her. So why go to her at all?"

"So it turned out you went there to give birth."

"Truly laughable. Do you think anyone else is as vicious as you, that anyone could raise a hand against a newborn?"

That had been an informant Isabella planted inside the household.

She'd gotten pregnant by some secret lover, drowned the baby once it was born, and pushed the whole thing onto me.

Lorenzo had had me driven out deep into the wild hills, into forests crawling with beasts, the way the Family disposed of those it branded.

By the time the Donna sent men to bring me out, I was wounded everywhere, barely breathing.

Back then I had still wept and tried to explain.

But now, I wouldn't.

I stood like a walking corpse, giving nothing back.

Lorenzo sensed something was off and shot me a frowning glance. His thumb moved to the heavy signet ring on his right hand, turning it once, slowly.

In the end he settled on the idea that I was working some new trick. "Spare me the routines you've picked up."

"This dead-hearted act, who is it for? Get out, before you foul Gianna's eyes."

When I got back to my own courtyard, I found all my belongings flung out across the cold stone.

"The Don says Gianna has taken a liking to these rooms. You're to move out."

But Lorenzo had assigned me no new place to stay.

The steward watched me with a vicious grin. "Then the bound wife can make do in the woodshed for the night."

"The Don says you used to sleep among corpses down in the morgue district. You can surely sleep anywhere."

Every servant in the house was enjoying the spectacle of me.

But inside, nothing stirred anymore.

How can someone whose heart is already dead still have anything left to care about?

The woodshed leaked drafts from every side, and by the middle of the night I had burned into a fever.

Drifting in and out, I felt Lorenzo storm in again, seething, and throw me to the ground.

"You actually dared to put a curse on Gianna!"

A doll stuck full of silver needles rolled out across the dirt in front of me.

I couldn't even be bothered to lift my eyelids.

The ink scrawled on it wasn't dry yet, but I hadn't set foot in this courtyard since being summoned to the Donna the day before. How could it possibly be me?

It was clumsy work. Yet Lorenzo hadn't spared it so much as a careful look before coming to lay the charge on me.

Once he'd vented, he left with Gianna.

I dragged myself back into the woodshed, curled up, and tried to make myself a little less wretched.