The Night I Heard Him Call Her Mine

Some questions answer themselves.

At least Enzo had always been generous. The accounts in my name held more money than I could spend in one lifetime. I could leave, raise this baby alone, and never ask him for a cent.

I rested my hand over my stomach and cried quietly. “It’s you and me now,” I whispered.

There were no seats left on the last flight out that night. I bought one for Los Angeles the next evening and spent the hours in between trying not to look at my phone.

All night, a new photo arrived every ten minutes.

Enzo had bought Rosa a house in the same gated neighborhood where I lived. In one photo, he was standing behind her with his hand over hers while she painted a wooden plaque for the nursery.

Happy family of three.

The words blurred in front of me.

Pain tightened low in my belly. My hand went slack, and the phone slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor hard enough to crack the screen. When it lit up again, the wallpaper showed a photo of Enzo kissing me on the night we first fell in love.

I smashed the phone against the floor.

Then I tore every framed picture off the wall.

There were more than a thousand of them in this house. In every single one, Enzo had looked at the camera and said, “I love you.”

Lies should have sounded uglier than that.

By sunrise, I had cut up every photo of us, thrown out the pottery mugs we made together, taken off my wedding ring, and sold every piece of jewelry he had ever bought me.

By the time I was done, the room looked stripped clean, like no marriage had ever lived inside it.

That was when Enzo came home.

His hands were full of shopping bags. He stepped inside, saw the empty wall over the fireplace, and stopped. “Gianna, where’s our wedding portrait?”

I looked him in the eye and said, “The frame cracked. I sent it out to be fixed.”

For the rest of the day, he played the role perfectly. He turned off his phone and He cooked for me. He searched pregnancy recipes and made soup in our kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, acting like a man who had nowhere else to be.

Just after six, my car service alert flashed across my phone. It was time to leave.

Then the doorbell rang.

Enzo glanced toward the foyer and smiled. “That should be the flowers.” He headed for the door with the spatula still in his hand, but the second he opened it, all the color drained from his face. The spatula slipped from his fingers and hit the tile with a sharp crack.

He did not even bother taking off his apron before snatching up his keys and heading back out.

“Enzo.”

He was already moving.

“What happened?”

He gave me nothing but a clipped, “Stay inside,” before the door slammed behind him.

I did not need an answer. The panic on his face told me it was Rosa.

And once again, he ran to her without looking back.

I took my suitcase and walked out to the street to hail a car before the house swallowed me whole.

Then I heard the low growl of an engine. A black, unmarked car rolled to a stop right in front of me.

I turned and bolted on instinct, but I barely got moving before a hand sealed over my mouth and nose. Darkness rushed in so fast my knees gave out beneath me.

When I came to, I was crammed inside a burlap sack. Nearby, a woman was crying in that soft, sugary voice I had learned to hate.

“Enzo, my incision hurts so bad. It’s infected. What if it leaves a scar?”

Then I heard his voice.

Cold. Flat. Nothing like the man who had held me the night before.

“Is this the butcher?”

Every muscle in my body locked.

I forced air into my lungs and dragged one word out through the cloth.

“Enzo, it's me!”