While He Protected Her, I Stopped Loving Him

The scowl melted from his face into something he meant to pass for tenderness, and he slid one hand into the pocket of his tailored slacks. He drew out a gold necklace, the chain pooling across his palm like something dredged up from a vault. "I wanted to ask you what kind of necklace you like."

My heart didn't flutter. No warmth rose in my chest, none of the foolish softness that used to flood me whenever Lorenzo placed a gift in my hands. There had been a time when a man of his standing offering me anything felt like the whole Family had turned to face me. That girl was gone, buried somewhere under the obsidian floors of this house.

"I don't like gold," I murmured, Lucia's words surfacing in my memory, sharp and unbidden. "I prefer diamonds."

He frowned and tossed the necklace onto the bed, where it landed without a sound against the silk. "Fine. Don't take it."

He turned on his heel and walked out of the bedroom, pulling the heavy door shut behind him with a force that rattled the framed photographs on the wall. The slam carried down the corridor like a gunshot in an empty church. His anger was a living thing tonight, prowling the halls of the estate. I didn't care. I let my ring finger curl inward against my palm, a small reflex, reaching for the band that no longer sat there.

The door opened again. Carla walked in as though she owned the threshold, the diamonds at her throat catching the lamplight, matching earrings winking beside her jaw. Everything about her gleamed with the certainty of a woman who knew exactly where she stood in this house, and it wasn't beneath me.

"How are you feeling, Adriana?" she asked, and the smirk arrived before the question finished leaving her mouth.

Before I could answer, her gaze slid to the gold necklace abandoned on the bed, and her grin widened, slow and pleased. "Oh, did Lorenzo give you that? He gave me one too." Her fingers rose to the diamonds at her collar and touched them lightly, reverently, the way a made man might touch the crest pinned to his lapel. "You can see it's quite expensive."

She let out a small laugh, soft and curling, the kind of laugh meant to remind me precisely how little I was worth in the arithmetic of this Family. She touched the jewels again, almost stroking them, as if their weight at her throat were the deed to everything I'd lost.

"I'm fine," I said, keeping my voice level, keeping my eyes off her so they wouldn't betray the heat building behind them. "Why haven't you gone home yet? It's nine o'clock."

"I had no idea it was this late." Her hand fell from her necklace and she gathered herself in a flurry of practiced surprise. "I'll go now. Bye!" And she was gone, slipping out of the bedroom and into the dark corridors of the Moretti house as though she belonged to them more than I did.

I rose from the bed and crossed to my closet, my footsteps silent on the cold marble. The tears came as I pulled the first garments from their hangers, blurring the rows of silk and wool I had once chosen so carefully to stand beside him at every sit-down and gala. I packed quietly, methodically, the way you do when grief has burned itself down to resolve.

Just as I closed the last of it, the door opened. Lorenzo walked in. His eyes moved across the emptied closet, lingered on the suitcase standing beside it, and I felt the room hold its breath waiting for him to speak. He said nothing about it. He simply looked, and then looked away, and that silence told me more about how little he cared than any accusation could have.

"Adriana, I'll be travelling to another Family's turf in a few weeks. With Carla. Family business." He rolled the signet ring on his finger with his thumb, slow at first. "The Falcone interests down south. What do you want me to bring you back?"

"Nothing," I said, and walked past him to sit on the edge of the bed.

He looked genuinely confused, as though my refusal violated some natural law. "Are you still sulking about the necklace? Don't be petty, Adriana. I'd have bought you a diamond one. It was sold out." The ring turned faster under his thumb.

I didn't answer. My silence struck something in him, and his composure cracked. "You should be grateful I bought you a gift at all!"

When I still said nothing, the muscle in his jaw worked and he threw the next words like a man tossing a coin to a beggar. "I'm going for a run."

I lifted my eyes only in time to watch his back disappear through the doorway.

It was an old script between us. Whenever we fought, Lorenzo would announce he was going running, and I would trail after him into the night and end up apologizing for sins that were never mine, soothing him until the storm passed and order was restored. He counted on it the way a Don counts on the loyalty of his men.

Not anymore. I stayed where I was, hands folded in my lap, the suitcase a quiet promise in the corner. I didn't follow. I didn't even care that he was angry. The thread between us had already gone slack.

He didn't come home that night.

The hours dragged through the dark house, and I lay awake in the cold expanse of the bed, wondering if Carla had run beside him, wondering if he'd spent the night in her bed instead of mine, her diamonds glittering on the nightstand while my side of this marriage rotted quietly in the dark. The estate creaked around me, all its locked rooms and watchful men, and I had never felt more alone inside its walls.

The next morning I woke to the door opening.

Lorenzo walked in, disheveled, his shirt wrinkled, the scent of someone else's perfume clinging faintly to his collar. He glanced at me, the scowl already set into his face like something carved there overnight.

"Make me two very beautiful dresses before evening."