He hadn't touched me since I'd gotten pregnant. Said he was afraid of hurting the baby.
But Catarina was nine months pregnant now, and that hadn't stopped them. Not once. Not twice. Three times.
When Tomasso finally finished, it was five in the morning. A thin gray light was creeping through the curtains, and somewhere beyond the estate walls, the first delivery trucks were rumbling past the front businesses on Mulberry Street. The compound was stirring. Soon the kitchen staff would start breakfast. Soon the morning detail would rotate in. Soon this house would fill with men who called my husband Don and kissed his ring and pretended the world he'd built wasn't rotting from the inside.
Catarina wouldn't let him leave. She stretched across the sheets and purred, "Tomasso, you're incredible. So much better than my late husband ever was. Thank you for giving me such an amazing experience."
"You're not bad yourself. Way more uninhibited than Giovanna."
A laugh scraped out of my throat before I could stop it. Bitter. Broken. It echoed off the marble walls of the hallway, and the silence that followed was the kind of silence that falls over a room when someone draws a weapon.
Tomasso's head snapped toward the doorway. Catarina gasped and yanked the sheets over herself, and there it was: the practiced motion of her hand tucking her hair behind her left ear, slow and deliberate, as though she were arranging herself for a portrait rather than covering evidence.
"Oh my, it's Giovanna Valente! She must have gotten the wrong idea. Tomasso, hurry, go explain things to her."
She used my maiden name. Not Rossetti. Valente. As if I were a guest in my own house. As if the name I'd carried into this marriage was the only one that still belonged to me.
Tomasso pulled on a robe and stepped out into the corridor. The overhead light caught the planes of his face, and for a moment he looked exactly like the man I'd married seven years ago. The sharp jaw, the dark eyes, the way he carried himself like the world owed him something and he intended to collect. When he saw the tears streaked down my face, his brows drew together in a hard line. Not guilt. Irritation. The expression of a man whose evening has been inconvenienced.
"It's the middle of the night. Why aren't you in bed? What are you doing out here?"