"Look, these are all the marks he left on me. He's always like this. Once he gets excited, he loses all control and leaves me so sore I can't get out of bed the next morning..."

"Ermanno told me that as long as you couldn't bear him a child, sooner or later the guilt would eat at you until you offered to let him take a second wife on your own. All I had to do was wait..."

She said so much in one breath, more than I could absorb. By the end, I realized there was nothing left inside me to feel.

Don Ermanno Santoro. What a brilliant strategist.

I slumped against the back of the chair. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that suddenly felt like a brand. A long time passed before I could force out a single sentence.

"If that's how it is, the position of his lawful wife is yours."

I didn't want to be Mrs. Santoro anymore.

I didn't want Ermanno Santoro anymore either.

After Katarina left, Ermanno sent a messenger back with word that Commission business had called him out of the city. He wouldn't return for two weeks at least.

Perhaps that was fate.

I packed my belongings calmly, climbed into the car already waiting beyond the estate's back gate, and drove south through the night until the city lights disappeared behind me.

Ermanno Santoro, perhaps you've forgotten what I once said to you.

"With heaven and earth as my witnesses, if the day ever comes that your heart changes, I will make sure you can never find me, not in this life, not in the next, not even in the depths of the afterlife."

Ermanno didn't return to the city until a full two weeks later. He didn't even stop to change out of his overcoat before rushing through the estate, past the soldiers who straightened at his approach, through the hall where the household staff went silent, and into the bedroom.

God only knew how desperately he'd missed that little woman he could never love enough, his darling moon, the one he wanted to pull into his very bones.

But when he pushed open the door, it was a different woman who looked up, one hand cradling her belly with a coy smile. Ermanno's heart plummeted.

"What are you doing in Gioia's room?"