Chapter 4

When I woke again, the Family's physician was pressing a hand to my shoulder, telling me it was finished, that I could go once he'd watched me another half hour.

A dull, swollen ache kept rising in my lower belly, still throbbing faintly.

I lay there for a while, then slowly sat up and dressed. I collected the medicine for the inflammation and the drug to stop the bleeding from the doctor's cabinet, and rode home alone in a black car that asked me no questions.

Once inside, I went straight to the bedroom to sleep.

By the time full dark had settled over the estate, the bedroom door was pushed open.

Lorenzo stood in the doorway, still in his polished shoes, his coat folded over one arm. He glanced at me, and the impatience he'd carried the whole drive home was already in his voice. "Adriana, what is the matter with you? You walked out without even touching the supper?"

"I called you all those times and you never picked up once, then you come home to sleep the day away by yourself?"

"Do you know how angry my mother is? Go and apologize to the Donna tomorrow. Don't be so childish."

I stayed curled under the blanket, not moving.

My belly hurt, and I hadn't the strength left to argue with a made man.

He stood a moment, and when no answer came, his footsteps drew closer. The mattress dipped hard under his weight. "Adriana! Don't lie there pretending to be asleep!"

Then he grabbed my arm and hauled me up out of the blanket. "What is it you're throwing a fit over? I'm speaking to you. Do you hear me?"

The pull wrenched my body, and in that instant it felt like something tore open low in my belly, a sharp pain shooting up from below.

My hand went to my stomach on instinct, cold sweat breaking out all over me.

My voice came out thin. "Lorenzo, why aren't you off keeping your ward company? What are you doing here, losing your temper at me?"

The jab stung him, but his grip didn't loosen. He leaned in closer. "Adriana, I only want to ask you what you actually mean by all this. You've worn that face since the night at the club, and today you walked out of my mother's house without a word. What do you take me for?"

"I've told you countless times, Serafina and I are not the thing you keep imagining."

"And if we truly were, I've known her since we were children. Do you think it would ever have come round to your turn?"

A wave of cold revulsion went through me, my heart sinking almost to despair.

It was like a knife turning in my belly, the pain draining the strength out of me.

I struggled to pull my arm free of his hand, and in that very moment a warm rush came from below, running down the inside of my thigh, unstoppable.

My night clothes and the sheet were soaked through in seconds, and the pain low in my belly was so bad it nearly choked off my breath.

I think I was hemorrhaging.

"Lorenzo..." My voice was frantic. "Send for the doctor, send the men—"

But right then his phone rang.

That one ringtone, the one he kept only for her, pulled his attention away in an instant.

His voice went gentle at once. "Serafina, what's wrong? Don't cry... take your time..."

Her thin sobbing came down the line.

"All right, all right, don't hang up, I'll be there."

Phone in hand, he turned and went out of the bedroom, cracking the knuckles of his right hand one by one as he walked, quick and urgent, the way a man moves toward something that must be handled.

I collapsed back onto the bed and heard the heavy security door in the front room slam shut.

The blood kept coming, soaking warm through layer after layer of cloth. I reached for the phone on the nightstand, my fingers sticky, and with shaking hands called down to the doctor and the men who move a wife quietly when her blood is spilled inside the house.

When I woke again I was in the Family's infirmary, and the ache in my belly was gone.

When the physician came to change the dressing, he told me the bleeding had been heavy, that I'd come near to needing another's blood in my veins. "A good thing you were brought here when you were."

I lay in that quiet room a full day.

It wasn't until the next that Lorenzo finally called.

"Did you work late on the books last night?"

"I finished early today and came home and cooked. I steamed the fish you like, and I sent a man round to see to the door. What hour will you be back?"

"Don't worry, I hung the laundry too. I said I'd remember."

"When are you coming home? I'll wait to eat with you."

I answered softly. "I'm not coming back."

He laughed. "Still angry?"

"Don't be. Serafina's lamp went dark last night, and she was frightened on her own, so I only went to change the bulb. That's all."

"It's such a small thing. Must you really keep holding it against me?"

If it had truly been life or death for her that night, perhaps I could have understood a little.

But when it came down to it, it was nothing more than a burned-out lamp.

So it turned out one lamp mattered more than my life.

I said nothing more to him and hung up.

Then, once the doctor released me, I went straight to the airfield, to the placement waiting for me in the far territory of an allied family.

From now on I wouldn't be the one reminding him to hang the laundry, to see to the door, to carry out the trash.

None of it had anything to do with me anymore.