The Ring Came Off Before He Knew About the Baby

I did not wait up for him. After sending word to a Consigliere I trusted, a man who handled the quiet dissolution of blood-bound unions when leverage allowed it, I turned off the lamp and went to bed early.

The soft chime of a message dragged me out of sleep somewhere in the dead hours. I found the phone in the dark and checked the time. It was already past one in the morning.

The space beside me was cold and empty, the sheets undisturbed. Of course they were.

I opened the screen and its pale glow cut across the darkened room. Gia had sent me several messages, one after another, as if she could not contain herself. My big brother is so handsome. I want to eat him up while he's sleeping.

Beneath the words was a photograph of Lorenzo, asleep.

He lay against a pink pillow stitched with some childish cartoon, his dark hair fallen loose across his forehead, his eyes shut, his thin lips slightly parted. The Don of the Falcone Family, the man whose name made grown soldiers lower their eyes, curled and defenseless on a girl's bed like something she owned.

The chat box flickered. The other party is typing. Then, just as quickly, Gia deleted every message she had sent.

A moment later a foolish little cartoon kitten appeared, paws pressed together, begging forgiveness.

I meant to send that to my best friend and sent it to you by mistake. Lorenzo's asleep, I was only playing, I snuck the photo. Don't be angry with him, all right?

She expected me to do what I had always done. To call him at once, my voice trembling, and demand an explanation. To hand her the satisfaction of watching me unravel. But that hunger in me had gone quiet. This time I only blocked her, set the phone face down on the nightstand, and closed my eyes again.

Whether she meant it as a joke or as a knife, I no longer cared. I turned my thumb once around my bare finger, feeling the smooth absence where the ring had been for five years. Then I caught myself, and stopped.

The next morning Lorenzo and Gia arrived at the club together.

The Falcone Family kept its legitimate face in a members-only establishment near the water, all dark wood and quiet money, where associates came and went and business that could not be spoken aloud was conducted over espresso. Gia walked in with one hand cradled protectively against her stomach, mincing her steps, and then, on cue, she stumbled. Her face went white with a fright too perfectly timed to be real.

Lorenzo bent and lifted her off her feet without a word, carrying her past the front room as though she were made of glass. She flushed prettily, wound her arms around his neck, and over his shoulder she found me. Her eyes were bright with triumph.

Nearby, a pair of associates leaned close, murmuring the way men do when they think the Don is out of earshot.

"She can't tell tribute from petty cash, that one, yet she's been his favored runner half a year now. You think it's real between them? You think the boss actually feels something?"

I was half turned away, tapping out a reply to my Consigliere, and I answered without weight, the way you answer weather. "Maybe."

The word had scarcely left me when a familiar voice cut through the low hum of the room.

"Adriana. Come here."

I turned. Lorenzo stood behind me, having set Gia somewhere out of sight, and he was watching me with that cold, level regard he reserved for me alone in these rooms.

Not one soul under the Falcone banner knew that Lorenzo and I were married. Ours was a blood-marriage kept entirely off the books, unwritten, unspoken, unknown to the soldiers who would have died for him. He forbade entanglements within the ranks, so before the Family I was only an elder of the house, a woman who had been there a long time and knew where things were kept. To keep the smallest whisper from taking root, he treated me at work with a studied indifference, as though I were furniture that had learned to walk.