Chapter 2

She knew.

She knew how many tests I had endured. She knew how often I had sat alone on the bathroom floor before dawn, staring at pregnancy tests with only one line.

Those were things I had told only my husband.

Now he had placed them in another woman's hands, and she had sharpened them into a knife.

Matteo was right about one thing.

Today was not the day to announce a pregnancy. It was not the day to end a marriage, or to let a wife discover in public that her husband had fathered another woman's child.

But they had already done all of those things.

Somehow, only my reaction was considered inappropriate.

My fingers touched the blood test in my bag.

All I had to do was take it out, and every congratulation in the room would stop.

Matteo would know that the child he had waited seven years for was already growing inside me. The council would reconsider the annulment. Bianca would be forced to return my rattle.

But I looked at Matteo's shoulders shielding her from me, and suddenly I did not want to tell him.

If a child needed his mother to beg at a funeral for his father to look back at him, then he was better off without that father.

"Congratulations," I said.

Bianca looked as if she had not expected that answer.

A flicker of unease crossed Matteo's face.

I gave him no time to study me. I turned and walked through the crowd.

As I reached the chapel doors, the silver rattle rang behind me again.

Once. Then once more.

Bianca was using it to entertain the child in her belly.

Behind me, the guests lined up to congratulate the future Don and the mother of his child.

No one realized that the Moretti family's true heir was already inside me, his heart beating for the first time.

I returned to the basement mortuary. Matteo's father, Don Salvatore Moretti, lay on the preparation table.

Three hours earlier, I had dressed him in his final suit, closed his eyelids, and concealed the discoloration on his skin. I had spent a long time softening the rigid curve at the right corner of his mouth so the mourners would believe he had died in peace.

Death could make a butcher look like a saint.

That was why the Moretti family needed me.

It was also why they did not want me anywhere near the autopsy report.

I lifted Salvatore's collar and found a needle mark behind his right ear.

It was so small I might have missed it if death had not drained the color from his skin.

His private physician claimed his heart had failed. But at the puncture site, I caught the faint scent of bitter almonds.

Twenty years ago, my father had recorded that same odor in his private ledger of deaths.

That record had earned him a fatal car crash everyone called an accident.

I swabbed the residue and sealed the sample in a bag. Then I opened the hidden compartment behind the wall and removed a black file. My father's handwriting filled the first page. I had just added Salvatore's name to the last.

I tucked the sample inside and locked the file away again.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

I did not turn around.

"Get out."

"It's me."

Matteo closed the door.

In the reflection of the stainless-steel instrument cabinet, I saw him standing behind me. He had removed the black gloves he had worn upstairs. In his hand was the envelope containing our annulment papers.

"I said I wouldn't discuss this today."

"You cannot avoid it forever."

"You've already made the decision for both of us. What is left to discuss?"

He set the envelope on the table.

"The apartment will remain yours. You may continue running the funeral home. I'll also establish a trust large enough to provide for you."

"Are you dividing up an inheritance for your wife?"

"I'm making sure you will be taken care of."

"You think I cannot survive without you?"

Matteo frowned.

He probably disliked my tone. In seven years, I had rarely spoken to him this way. I knew when to stay silent during family meetings, when to entertain guests with blood on their hands, and how not to ask whose blood stained his shirt when he came home after midnight.

I had once called that understanding.

Now I saw it for what it was: well-trained obedience.

"Lucia, this isn't a personal choice."

"Sleeping with her wasn't personal?"

"I told you, I have no memory of that night."

"No memory, but somehow there is a child."

"A paternity test doesn't lie."

"People do."

His eyes went cold.

"Do not turn Bianca into your enemy. She had no choice in this either."

I almost laughed.

The woman carrying my husband's child had no choice.

But the wife whose marriage was being erased was expected to accept it with grace.

"Sign the papers," Matteo said. "When the funeral is over, the lawyers will handle the rest."

I picked up the pen and signed the last page.

Not Lucia Moretti.

Lucia Vitale.

I removed my wedding ring and placed it on top of my signature.

Matteo stared at the surname, and his expression darkened.

"Do you have to do this?"

"You are the one ending our marriage. I merely put your decision in writing."

The silver rattle chimed outside the door.

"Matteo..."

Bianca leaned against the frame with his coat around her shoulders. The rattle meant for my baby hung from one of her fingers.

"I came to return Lucia's gift." She smiled. "The elders said it was inappropriate for me to keep it."

Her eyes never moved to me. They remained on Matteo, waiting for him to say that anything she wanted was hers.

As expected, he frowned.

"You should be resting upstairs."

"I can't sleep when you're not there."

She crossed to him, set the rattle on the table, and noticed the signed agreement.

"You finally signed it?"

The question came so naturally that she sounded like the owner of our marriage.

"This has nothing to do with you," I said.

"It will soon." Bianca lowered her eyes. "Matteo and I have to marry before the baby is born. The lawyer said someone will come to fit my wedding dress next week."

Matteo said her name.

"Bianca."

It was not a warning.

It sounded more like a belated reminder after too much indulgence.

She bit her lip at once.

"I'm sorry. I thought Lucia had accepted it. She congratulated us upstairs."

I reached for my handbag.

Bianca was faster.

She knocked it over as if by accident. My lipstick, keys, and folded blood test spilled across the floor.

She bent and picked up the paper.

I tried to snatch it from her, but she had already read the first line.

Pregnancy confirmed.

Seven weeks, three days.

For one instant, every trace of fragility vanished from Bianca's face.

The change was as quick as light sliding across a blade.

"You're pregnant?"