At first it was just small courtesies. Checking in on her. Making sure she was comfortable. Then came the late-night calls. Her legs were swollen. Her feet were numb. She needed him. Again and again, she pulled him out of our bed in the middle of the night, and each time I heard his footsteps recede down the corridor of the estate, the silence he left behind grew heavier.
On our wedding anniversary, he left me sitting alone at the restaurant and rushed to the hospital to sit with her through a prenatal checkup. I sat there for forty minutes. The candles burned down to nothing. The waiter stopped asking if I wanted to order.
I got jealous. Of course I did. But every time, Tomasso would take my hands and say with absolute conviction: "Her husband saved my life once. His wife and child, how can I just abandon them? Giovanna, you're the kindest person I know. You understand, don't you?"
And when he said it, his right palm would press against mine, and I could feel the raised scar there, the blood-oath mark from the rite of fratellanza he'd sworn with Fausto. He invoked that scar like scripture. Like it made everything holy.