I Gave Him Ten Years. Then I Took It All Back

The dinner ended, and Marco took off his wedding ring and dropped it into the car's storage compartment.

I moved to the back seat without being asked. He looked at me in the rearview mirror, surprised that I had not sat next to him.

"What?"

I understood what he meant. It was the kind of unspoken understanding we had built over ten years of hardship.

"We agreed on our wedding night," I said. "I would never try to take Sofia's place."

Ten years ago, Sofia Conti disappeared the night before the wedding. Her parents brought me back from the countryside in a hurry, announced that I was their real daughter, and pushed me into the marriage with the Falcone family. On our wedding night, Marco drank himself unconscious and called out Sofia's name for hours.

While Sofia raised champagne glasses at gallery openings in Europe, I attended the meetings Marco could not show up to during the years the family had cast him aside. I kept the allies from turning against us. While Sofia skied in the Alps, I spent an entire night at the negotiating table and secured the first piece of territory that truly belonged to the Falcone family.

Sofia had ten years of freedom. She came back and told me to leave, as if she could take everything without having paid a single price.

Marco's lips moved. "Ginevra, actually we..."

His phone rang before he could finish. Sofia's name appeared on the screen, and he answered through the car's Bluetooth.

"Marco, I heard from my parents that you still do not have children. Is it because you were waiting for me?"

Her voice was bright and shy.

"Sofia, what are you talking about?" Mrs. Conti cut in from the other end.

The topic of children had always been off limits for me. When I was twenty-five, I lost my first child. That year Marco was fighting his half-brother Lorenzo's mother, Valentina, for control of the family. My car was forced off the road by two vehicles on the highway, and the airbag deployed too late. I lay in the hospital bed watching Marco hold my hand without saying a word.

When I was twenty-eight, I got pregnant again. I was careful this time. I never went anywhere without guards, and I barely left the house. The news still leaked. One afternoon, a bullet came through the apartment window and went straight through the back of the sofa where I was sitting. I hit the corner of the table when I fell, and the ride to the hospital was too rough. The baby did not survive. I cried until I could not breathe, and Marco held me and swore it would never happen again.

He kept that promise. He pushed Valentina and Lorenzo out of Chicago and cut off every channel the rival families had used to reach us. The Falcone family ruled with an iron fist, and everyone knew what it meant to touch his family.

When Marco became Don at thirty-two, he gave his first interview. He said a few words of thanks to me on camera. A week after that interview aired, Sofia came back.

Marco saw my face in the rearview mirror and ended the call immediately.

"Ginevra, Sofia does not know what happened these past ten years. She has always been sheltered. She speaks without thinking sometimes."

"Enough," I cut him off. "The Don hardly speaks to anyone, but when it comes to Sofia, you cannot stop talking. You are even making excuses for her now."

He frowned and pulled the car over sharply.

"Ginevra, are you still angry about what happened back then?"