While You Stayed With Her,I Lost Everything

The day I hemorrhaged from the miscarriage, my mother and father raced through the rain toward the Family's clinic on the edge of the territory. On the way, a car came out of the dark and took them both.

I lay on the table and signed the blood pacts with hands still slick with my own blood, the papers a made person signs when life hangs in the balance.

The baby couldn't be saved. Neither could my parents.

And the man whose seventy-six calls had gone unanswered posted a glowing little celebration through the network.

Congratulations, sweetie. After a long, hard night, you're finally a mother.

Weak as I was, I tapped a like. A text from him came through at once.

Just one word. "Delete it."

I sent him the clinic's location.

"Come to the clinic. There's something I need to say to your face."

"I've got something important. I can't come! Have your parents take you to the checkup, they've got nothing better to do anyway."

"Your so-called important thing is delivering her dog's puppies?"

"How does carrying a child turn you into a jealous shrew? You're jealous of a dog now?"

I didn't have the strength to argue with him. If he wouldn't come, then he could talk to the Consigliere.

By the time I'd finished arranging my parents' burial, with all the quiet rites the Family owed its own, it was already the next evening.

I dragged my exhausted body to the door of our home and opened it.

The rooms I'd cleaned so carefully were a wreck.

Lorenzo Marchetti was bent over, rummaging for something, tossing whatever he touched onto the floor without a thought. Habit and certainty both, that someone would always clean up after him. The youngest Underboss the Marchetti name had ever made never picked up after himself. Other men did that.

He heard the door and didn't even lift his head, an edge of complaint in his voice.

"Where did you run off to all day on a Saturday? I had to send out for lunch."

I went still. So he hadn't come home last night either.

For two years now, he'd always been like this.

When a light broke in Gianna Russo's apartment, he could drag himself out of bed in the dead of night to fix it for her. But he'd forget to bolt our own door, and a drunk had wandered in off the street, and I had nightmares about it for a solid month. A made man's wife, and he couldn't be bothered to turn a lock.

When Gianna's dog was about to whelp, he could refuse to take me to my checkup. But he'd cleared a whole week at her side beforehand, though that was work for some hireling, not for the Family's most trusted fixer.

Getting no answer, Lorenzo finally turned to look at me, surprise rising in his eyes.

"You're so pale. Is the baby giving you trouble again?"

I stepped back, away from the hand reaching for my belly, my voice flat.

"I called you seventy-six times yesterday. Why didn't you pick up?"

Lorenzo's hand was still hanging in the air. He frowned at the question. He cracked one knuckle of his right hand, slow, the way he did with men who weren't worth his time.

"Adriana Vitale, are you interrogating me?"

"Gianna and I grew up together. And Sweetie isn't like the other animals in her parlor. She's raised that dog at her side since it was small. They have a deep bond."

"Sweetie was whelping. Gianna was worried sick. I had to help with the delivery. In a life-and-death moment like that, who has time to answer your pointless calls?"

"It was just a checkup. Plenty of women in your condition go on their own. And if not, you had your parents, they've got nothing else to do anyway. What difference does it make if I'm not there?"

I watched him stand there so righteous. The room had gone very quiet, only the slow tick of the clock on the mantel, loud as a dripping tap.

I wanted so badly to ask, then where are my parents?

That crash was brutal. My father had no pulse by the time they carried him into the clinic. My mother made it as far as the table, but her injuries were too deep, too tangled. The Surgeon, the Family's own elite fixer, the man who unmade death for a living, said that perhaps only if Lorenzo cut for her himself would there be a sliver of a chance.

He said he had no time to answer my calls. Yet the moment I tapped a like on that post, he could appear at once to order me to take it back. Terrified Gianna might read into it.

"Really just childhood friends?"

"But Lorenzo, I saw you kiss her."

In the very restaurant where he'd asked me to take his name. In the exact same seats, under the same low light, with the same waiters who knew to keep their eyes down when a Marchetti dined.

In my daze that day, I never saw the motorcycle speeding toward me.

The rider braked in time. But that little life inside me, only three months along, was gone in the end all the same.

Lorenzo's normally still eyes flickered with something close to panic.

"Gianna was beside herself over Sweetie, so I took her out to clear her head. She had a few too many, that's all"

His tone softened a notch.

"Enough about that. I'll come with you to the next checkup with the Surgeon. You have my word."

There it was again.

A flimsy excuse to brush me off, then a little sweetener tossed my way, as if nothing had happened.

But Lorenzo, you'll never have to come to another checkup with me again.

"Don't bother. Let's sever the union."

Lorenzo went still for a beat, then his voice came low and cutting, humiliation curdling into anger.

"Adriana, do all you press people love blowing things out of proportion? I told you it was nothing. Do you have to make a sit-down out of it?"

"And what are you now? A clerk shuffling papers for the information network. You're about to turn thirty, carrying a child. Who else in this city would want you, besides me?"

"I'm out there cleaning up the Family's problems every single day, breaking my back for this name, not so I can come home and watch you throw a fit over nothing."

He turned for the door.

As he passed the entryway, his eye caught the corner of a document sticking out of my bag.

Death certificate. The two words were stark and unmistakable.

Lorenzo turned back, puzzled.

"Who died?"

He reached to pull it free for a better look.

Then his phone rang. Gianna's voice came through, choking helplessly on tears.

"Lorenzo, one of the puppies looks like it choked on its milk, and I've still got customers in the parlor. I can't handle it all."

"It won't die, will it? I'm so scared"

His whole face tightened with worry.

"Don't cry. I'll be right there."

And with that, he was gone, no backward glance.

He even forgot to lock the study, the one room in the house he'd never liked me setting foot in.

Something pulled me inside, and then something under the desk stabbed at my eyes.

That year I was the most promising young reporter the network had, and I'd landed the assignment to draw out the old man who'd run the Family's clinic for thirty years. But the old man was proud and aloof, and he shut the door in my face.

After days of back-to-back nights, my blood sugar crashed and I fainted in the courtyard garden of the estate.

It was Lorenzo who picked me up. He told me the old fixer was stubborn, that once he'd made up his mind, nothing on God's earth would change it.

I dropped my head, dejected. The next second, an orange candy was tucked into my mouth.

Lorenzo gave me a playful wink.

"But I admire people who take their work seriously. So why don't you sit down with me instead?"

It was only later that I learned he was the youngest man ever made Underboss in the Marchetti Family. The Family's most trusted hand for the delicate problems no outsider could ever know about.

So many people had wanted an hour with this brilliant, dangerous star of the underworld and been turned away. He made an exception for me alone.

That was how Lorenzo and I came together.

Later, we both grew busier and busier, and Lorenzo looked at me, troubled.

"Adriana, I know earning your own name in the network is your dream."

"But there are elders in this house who can't be left without anyone to care for them. Could you step back from the work? I swear to you I'll be good to you the rest of my life."

And I knew just as well that becoming the finest fixer the Family had ever seen was his dream.

So I gave in.

I didn't walk away entirely. I moved to the quiet end of the network instead, shuffling logistics and paper. At least that way I could stay a little closer to the work I loved.

On so many sleepless nights, I'd run my fingers over my old press credentials in the lamplight.

Every time Lorenzo caught me at it, he was wracked with guilt, promising over and over that he'd be good to me.

But now, those credentials I'd treasured so dearly were being used to prop up the leg of his desk.

I opened his safe with Gianna's birthday.

On top sat a thick kraft paper envelope.

Inside were all kinds of photographs of the two of them.

Embracing. Kissing. Strolling hand in hand along a beach.

There were also receipts. The cash he'd put up to buy Gianna a house, to set up her business, to renovate the place.

Even though the kennel bled money month after month, laundered Family cash poured in to cover every shortfall, and he had to keep covering them himself.

The handwriting on the front of the envelope was Lorenzo's.

"I will clear every thorn from the path of your dreams."

I stared at that line for a long, long time.

Through my mind flashed these five years I'd spent inside the Marchetti walls, tending his parents, washing the linen, setting the Sunday table, keeping a made man's house in the order the famiglia expected.

I thought of the old colleagues I'd run into, the couriers still burning to chase a story, the ones who worked the night through over a dispatch nobody else dared to file, and the envy and the ache that had risen in me each time.

A laugh slipped out of me before I knew it.

So it turned out he knew how to protect someone's dreams too.

I photographed everything and put it all back exactly where it had been, every receipt squared to the edge of the safe. At last I made my decision.

"Hey, Carmela. I heard the network's been looking for someone to go embedded in the Old Country, into the smuggling routes, and no one's put their name down yet."

"If you'll have me, I'm willing to go."

Carmela went quiet for a moment. I heard the soft tap of her fingernail against the rim of a cup, twice, the way she always did before she said something that turned a life on its hinge. Then she said, delighted, "Of course. Back when you asked to step out of the network and marry into the Marchetti name, I thought it was such a waste. This is a rare chance. It's dangerous out there among the warlords, no question. But when you come back, no one in this business will ever speak your name the same way again."

"So get yourself ready. You'll move out in the next few days."

I set down the phone and started packing.

There was nothing left in this house I cared to hold on to.

Except for the sweater my mother knitted for me before she died. That, I was taking with me.

When I was little she'd knitted me plenty of things. Later I grew up, and she grew old, her eyes not what they used to be.

I didn't want her wearing herself out, so I told her to stop knitting.

After I got pregnant, I suddenly couldn't stand the cold.

And she secretly knitted me a sweater anyway, her eyes red and raw from staying up over it, waving it all off like it was nothing.

"Hand-knit's warmer. I picked out good yarn for it."

"You love the baby in your belly. Well, I love my baby too."

It made my heart ache and my chest swell, and I never had the heart to wear it.

But now, that sweater was gone.

I thought back to the scene when I'd gotten home, and I was about to call Lorenzo and ask.

Then I saw Gianna's new post.

"Hehe, I'd just been saying the babies were too cold now that they're newborns, and a certain someone went and brought over a sweater~"

"On the babies' behalf, thank you, Daddy~ And of course, this mama's remodeling skills are no joke either."

So Lorenzo had gone to celebrate those puppies' birthday with her.

In the photo, the two of them had their heads pressed together, their bodies tucked tight against each other.

Each of them cradled three puppies.

And I recognized it in a single glance.

The little "dog outfits" those puppies were wearing had been cut from the sweater my mother knitted for me.

When I pushed open the glass door of the kennel, the front Gianna ran with skimmed Family cash, I walked in just as Lorenzo and Gianna were eating cake off the same spoon.

Lorenzo had a severe revulsion for anything unclean.

At home his bowls and silver had to be scalded and stored apart from everyone else's, and at meals he always reached for the serving fork first.

Once, after I'd worked the house all day and was parched, my throat dry, I took a sip of water from his glass.

He hadn't said anything at the time. That night, the glass turned up in the trash.

Afterward Lorenzo explained it to me, said it was a habit the work bred in him, the same care a fixer takes with everything he touches.

So it depended on the person after all.

When she saw me, Gianna arched a brow and let out a soft, practiced laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear a half-second too fast.

"Oh, big sister Adriana's here? Lorenzo and I have been close since we were kids, never one to draw lines between what's his and mine. Don't take it the wrong way, now."

"Lorenzo, what did I tell you? There's no way she's going to dissolve the union."

"After all, a woman whose standing in this life came to nothing, who can only live on the tribute her husband hands her, what would she raise the children and keep her parents on if she walked away? See, she's chased you all the way here. Clings on awfully tight, doesn't she?"

"Sigh, compared to her, I suppose I'm just too thin-skinned. All I can do is honestly stay an independent woman who makes her own way~"

Lorenzo pinched her nose, doting.

"Fine, fine, you're the cleverest one. Always were a little sprite, even as a kid."

Then he looked over at me, the way you'd forgive a child who didn't know any better.

"Enough, Adriana. Since you came crawling here to smooth things over, I'll pretend I never heard the word divorce leave your mouth."

"Go home and put the apartment in order. These puppies were just whelped, things are still delicate, so I need to stay and keep an eye on them with Gianna a few more days."

Listening to the two of them stand there in that laundered little front of hers, I found it almost laughable.

One played the kept woman without an ounce of shame.

The other dressed up his dishonor as something noble, something a made man could be proud of.

I didn't waste breath on Lorenzo. I only gave a thin, mocking smile.

"Since Miss Russo is so resourceful, stealing another woman's husband apparently wasn't enough for her. She had to team up with my husband to steal my clothes too?"

"May I ask, this self-made woman of her own means, does that mean she made herself in the kept-woman trade?"

A few women picking through the grooming shelves nearby turned to stare at Gianna, startled.

"Wait, miss, so this handsome one isn't actually your man? But the two of you were eating off the same spoon. That's not exactly proper, is it?"

"Right. A minute ago I said you two made a darling couple and you didn't deny it. He's had a wife this whole time?"

Gianna let out a soft, practiced laugh and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, but the laugh came a half-second too fast, and there was nothing behind it. Her face had gone crimson, and she had no comeback.

Seeing her like that, the women curled their lips in disdain, set down the things they'd already chosen, and hurried out into the street.

The rims of Gianna's eyes went red. She turned to Lorenzo, the very picture of wronged innocence.

"Lorenzo, did Adriana come here on purpose to ruin my shop?"

"I only thought that sweater was warm and soft, perfect for the puppies. She's already spent so much of your money. What kind of clothes doesn't she own? Why would she smear me like this?"

"Those were some of my regular customers. How am I supposed to face them now? How am I supposed to run a business?"

Lorenzo wiped her tears away, aching for her, then turned and fixed me with a look that could have buried a man.

"Adriana, I took the sweater. What are you taking it out on Gianna for? It wasn't worth anything. When did you turn so petty?"

"You're only going to get bigger as the months go on, won't even be able to wear it. Just have your mother knit you another. Problem solved."

"It's not some treasure stitched by a world-famous hand. Why carry on like it's precious?"

Looking at that lofty expression of his, at the contempt sitting cold in his eyes.

I slapped him across the face, unable to hold it back, and the scream tore out of me.

"Yes, what my mother made is precious! Because she can never knit me anything again!"

"While you and your little childhood sweetheart were cooing over each other, while you'd sooner sit through her dog whelping than pick up my emergency call, my parents were already dead!"

Lorenzo's eyes flew wide, and his hands let go of Gianna on instinct.

"What did you say? How could your mother and father possibly"

Before he could finish, Gianna shoved me hard.

"What gives you the right to put your hands on people?"

"It's just a ratty old sweater, isn't it? Like anyone wants the thing. Here. Take it back!"

She tore the sweater off the puppies and hurled it into the litter box the clerk was carrying toward the door.

"Going on about your parents dying. I ran into your aunt and uncle at the market just this morning!"

"I can't stand women like you, using a pregnancy to lie and play helpless, throwing fits, doing whatever it takes to bend your husband to your will. A parasite. You're a disgrace to every woman in this city."

The litter box hadn't been emptied yet.

Clumps of filth clung to the wool, giving off a foul stench.

My mother's love, in the end, was ruined past all recognition.

"I, I didn't mean to, I didn't know it was the boss's"

The clerk, terrified by the bloodshot look in my eyes, stood frozen, at a loss.

Rage and hatred scorched my insides until everything burned. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my bare ring finger, the place a wedding band used to sit, pressing until it hurt, pressing until I was a breath from doing something there would be no walking back from.

I spun toward the one who had started all of it and raised my hand high.

Only the slap never landed on Gianna's face.

Lorenzo's hand cracked across mine first.

In the silent shop, it rang out sharp and clear.

I staggered, my right cheek burning, a ringing in my ears.

I lifted my head in disbelief.

Lorenzo seemed startled by what he'd done too, his eyes wide and stunned as he looked at me. A made man who'd ordered worse without flinching, frozen by the print of his own hand on his wife's face.

But out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Gianna's reddened eyes.

And that shock curdled into disappointment and disgust.

"Adriana, what right do you have to lay a hand on Gianna, just because she exposed your lies? And to think you used to be a reporter who made it her mission to chase the truth."

"You'd even curse your own parents? Aren't you afraid of what's coming to you? Save up some good karma for the baby in your belly, at least!"

"Either you apologize, or you take your trash and get out. Make one more scene and I'll have the Feds at that door before you reach the curb."

By the time I made it back to the estate in a daze, clutching that heap of fabric, I was soaked through from the downpour.

Shaking with cold.

The rain had spread the filth across the fabric until it was unrecognizable, like a dirty rag.

It was supposed to keep me warm in my mother's place.

I sat still through the night, and when the grey light came up over the territory, I tore up the dissolution papers I'd meant to use to part on good terms.

Lorenzo was right. A reporter's duty is to show the world the truth.

So how could I let him down?

Deep in the night, a cool, herbal-scented touch spread across my cheek.

I opened my eyes. Lorenzo stood there with the ointment, the Family's own fixer come to dress a wound he'd made, looking at me with guilt.

"Adriana, does it still hurt?"

"I'm sorry. I lost my temper today. But you shouldn't have said those things about Gianna in front of the customers."

"She's an unmarried girl, and she runs that grooming parlor out in the open. That kind of talk is bad for her standing."

I brushed his hand away, my voice flat.

"And so?"

Lorenzo pressed his lips together, testing the waters.

"So could you apologize to her publicly? Just say the pregnancy got to you, that you weren't in your right mind, that none of it was true."

"The day after tomorrow is the second anniversary of Gianna's kennel opening. Don't you know half the people who decide what stories run? You could put a good word out for her place while you're at it."

For a moment, that ointment smelled more revolting than soiled cat litter.

"Lorenzo, I'll only ask this once. Are you sure?"

He dropped his eyes, not daring to look at me, yet his voice was strangely firm. In the silence the only sound was the slow crack of his right knuckles, one at a time, the way he settled a matter already beneath him.

"Gianna's been crying so hard. Just think of it as making it up to her. Think of it as banking some good fortune for our baby, too."

"As long as you agree, I promise I'll come with you to every checkup the Surgeon sets from now on. I'll be twice as good to you and the baby in the future."

I gazed quietly at this face.

I couldn't find a trace of the man he used to be.

After a long silence, I smiled.

"Fine."

Lorenzo, delighted, moved to pull me into his arms, but his phone kept buzzing against the nightstand.

I didn't have to look to know who it was.

Sure enough, once again he chose to run to Gianna.

But I wasn't sad anymore.

A few minutes later, Gianna called.

"Adriana, you're shameless, you know that?"

"Pregnant and still can't sit still, playing the pitiful little wife to lure dear Lorenzo over to see you. And how'd that turn out? One crook of my finger and he came scurrying right back to me."

"If it weren't for that thing in your belly, he'd have cut you loose ages ago!"

In the past, I would have hung up on the spot.

But this time, I pressed my thumb against the bare place where my ring used to sit, touched my empty stomach, and let out a scornful laugh.

"Right. So you do know I'm carrying his child. The Marchettis value a whole, intact bloodline, and he cares about saving face in front of the Family."

"And if I'm not mistaken, you two always use protection when you sleep together, don't you?"

Gianna fell silent in an instant, confirming everything I'd guessed.

"Then you should know that as long as I have this child, there's no way he severs the union for you."

"Men. No matter how much fun they have out there, in the end they always come home."

"Oh, and just now he told me that once our baby arrives, he's signing every holding in his name over to the child. So you won't walk away with a thing."

"As for you, you're nothing but a toy to amuse my husband while I'm too far along to bother. I should really be thanking you."

On the other end of the line, I heard Gianna's furious, ragged breathing, the sound of a woman who'd built her standing on borrowed Family cash and just felt the floor tilt.

"Don't get cocky. I'll make sure Lorenzo severs the union with you."

And she certainly didn't disappoint me.

Half an hour later, she sent over a video of her and Lorenzo in bed together. With a taunting voice message attached.

"Adriana, what is there to be so smug about? All I had to do was shed a few tears and Lorenzo agreed to give me a baby."

"So we didn't bother with protection today. Once I'm pregnant, you and that little bastard in your belly can wait to be thrown out on the street."

I didn't reply again. After all, with a fool, every extra word is wasted breath. I pressed my thumb against the bare inside of my ring finger, against the place a ring used to sit, and held it there until the impulse passed.

Two days later, Lorenzo footed the bill himself and threw a party at one of the Family's hotels to celebrate the second anniversary of Gianna's grooming parlor, the little laundering front she liked to call her own.

Among the guests were friends the two of them shared, his close associates from the inner circle, and the loyal patrons who kept Gianna's kennel in cash.

Before the doors even opened, Gianna had announced to everyone that today I would be offering her a public apology, carried live across every channel of the network, into every territory that mattered.

Once the timing was confirmed, Lorenzo gave a nod to the man at the control panel, signaling that they could begin. The room straightened at the gesture. In this world a nod from a made man was an order, and orders were obeyed without a word.

The moment the screen lit up, my face appeared.

"Good evening, everyone. At my husband's request, I'd like to solemnly offer Miss Gianna Russo an apology today."

Gianna's eyes gleamed with the smug triumph of a winner. Across the room she let out a soft, practiced laugh and tucked her hair behind one ear, the laugh arriving a half-second too fast.

The next second, I let one corner of my mouth curl.

"I'm sorry that when I received the video of you in bed with my husband, I couldn't hold it back and threw up out of disgust, and so failed to respect your dignity as the other woman."

"By way of compensation, I'll do exactly as you both wished, and along with all my friends in the network, send the two of you a nice wave of free exposure. Across every territory. To every ear that listens."

"Now, everyone, please enjoy their performance, and let us all bear witness to this grand and filthy affair."