My husband, Don Cassian Marchetti, transferred the Marchetti family’s quarterly dividend into his widowed sister-in-law Camille’s private account. Again. And I didn’t even have a penny to repair my mother’s grave. When Cassian walked through the bedroom door that evening, I hurled the crystal tumbler at the wall behind him. “Celeste—” “Sixty-eight thousand! To that woman again! For what—her ‘treatment’? Her ‘recovery’? Which Swiss spa is she bleeding us dry from this time?” Cassian didn’t flinch. He simply loosened his tie, jaw tightening with that particular brand of cold disdain I’d grown so familiar with over the past three years. “Are you done?” “Never! Not until you stop funneling our money—to your brother’s widow like she’s your goddamn kept woman!” Something shifted behind his eyes. Then he gave a scornful laugh. When he spoke, his voice was ice. “You want to talk about propriety, Celeste? About shame?” “Tell me,” he continued, each word a scalpel, “who was it that crawled into my bed at just nineteen? Who spread her legs before there was a ring on her finger, got herself knocked up, and then begged me to find a clinic that wouldn’t ask questions?” I went still. Everything—the rage, the wine-buzz, the trembling—froze solid in my chest. I still remember that winter when I was nineteen. The private clinic in Queens, the blood that wouldn’t stop. Cassian—barely twenty-one, not yet hardened—holding me against his chest, tears streaming into my hair. “I’m sorry. God, Cece, I’m so sorry. I’ll spend my whole life making this up to you. I swear I will never let anyone hurt you again.” And now, at twenty-eight, Don of the crumbling Marchetti empire, he’d weaponized my deepest wound to defend another woman. He didn’t know. In that moment, standing there with his lip curled in disgust, my husband didn’t know that I was carrying again. Eight weeks. The child I’d wanted for six years. And with those words, that child died right alongside whatever remained of my heart. The housekeeper, Maria, stood frozen by the door. Behind her, I could see Cassian’s underboss Enzo and two of the household staff, faces slack with shock. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. My face must have gone white. I couldn’t form words. My tongue was a dead thing behind my teeth. And Cassian looked briefly uncomfortable. He rubbed his temple, turning away. Immediately, Enzo stepped in with that practiced smoothness. “Cece, listen—it wasn’t his idea. Camille showed up at the office, on her knees, sobbing. Said she’d die without the medication. What was he supposed to do?” Maria chimed in: “It’s almost Christmas, dear. Couples fight. You’ll sort it out by morning.” I used to believe that too. That Cassian only pitied Camille. A young widow with a sick daughter—how could I not understand his sympathy? Until the compassion turned into flying her to specialists across three continents. Until he started bringing her to family gatherings on his arm while I sat home with a fever. Until someone photographed them hugging each other on his yacht in Portofino—and the pictures circulated through every allied family in the Northeast. Our first real war over it nearly brought down the house. He swore it was nothing. He signed a written agreement: no more contact. But then—a strand of auburn hair on his collar. Her perfume lingering in his car. And excuse after excuse until his patience simply ran out and he stopped pretending to care whether I believed him. And I became what he accused me of being: paranoid, bitter, suffocating. Now I was done suffocating. “We’re finished,” my voice sounded far away. “Let’s divorce.” Cassian stared at me like I’d spoken in tongues. “Over money? Over sixty-eight grand? Jesus Christ, Celeste, get a grip.” “We’ve been together for eleven years.” Even now. He believed we were unbreakable. Then the door swung open. One of Camille’s maids stood there trembling. “Mr. Marchetti, sir—Mrs. Camille Marchetti is having chest pains again. She’s asking for you. Please come quick.” I watched my husband grab his coat without a backward glance, without a single hesitation, and disappear down the hallway toward her. The door slammed shut behind him. I stood alone in our bedroom, wine and glass at my feet, and laughed until I cried.
I drove myself to the clinic on East 74th. A private practice. Discreet. Dr. Ostrowski examined me in silence, then sat back with a long exhale. “Mrs. Marchetti, given your prior termination—if you proceed with this, the likelihood of future conception is… extremely low. I want to make sure you understand what you’re choosing.” I understood perfectly. I will never bring a child into a family of violence, humiliation, and infidelity. I signed the consent form. They gave me sedation. But I still felt everything. The cold metal. The pressure. The specific, hollowing pain of something being taken from the inside out. Dry-eyed, I stared at the ceiling tiles—and thought about a boy with dark eyes pressing his tear-streaked face against my hair nine years ago. That love was real. His anguish was real. But the man he had become loved someone else. Pities someone else. Protects someone else. The nurse helped me sit up afterward. My legs were cotton, my abdomen a throbbing agony. I leaned against the corridor wall, inching toward the exit. And that’s when I saw them. Cassian. His hand at the small of Camille’s back, guiding her through the clinic’s front entrance with that expression I hadn’t seen directed at me in years—soft, attentive, concerned. I watched from the corridor like a ghost. He murmured something close to her ear, squeezed her arm, then strode toward the pharmacy counter. Then Camille spotted me. Her eyes widened—a flash of surprise, then calculation, then performance. She pressed her fingers to her lips. “Celeste? You’re here too? Are you… following us?” A delicate pause. “Cass only brought me because I had no one else. Don’t read into it. Please.” No one else. I’m the one who has no one. I couldn’t say anything. I turned to leave. That’s when Camille dropped. Knees hitting the polished floor with a theatrical crack, fingers clawing at the hem of my coat. “Please!” Her voice pitched upward—loud enough to carry. “That money is all I have! The doctor says my heart can’t survive another winter without the full treatment protocol! You can’t make Cass take it back—you can’t! I just want to live! I just want to see my daughter grow up!” She wailed. Tears, mucus, heaving sobs. Every patient in that waiting room turned to stare. An elderly woman in a fur collar shot me a look of pure venom. “What kind of person—” “Have you no shame?” Another voice. “She’s begging on her knees!” My abdomen seized with a fresh wave of cramping. Cold sweat poured down my temples. Then Cassian appeared through the crowd, took one look at Camille crumpled on the floor, and his face went to stone. He hauled her up, tucked her behind him. Then turned on me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Celeste? You followed me here? Are you a stalker? You can’t let it go for one goddamn day? She’s weak and has to raise her child alone. Is there nothing left inside you?” Alone? Third anniversary. My birthday. Camille had the “episode” again and again. He’d left me, always. And came home at dawn, asked why I couldn’t just be more understanding. I was tired of hearing those words year after year. It happened fast. I didn’t even open my mouth. He grabbed my shoulder—”Answer me!”—and shoved. In that moment, my spine connected with the marble column behind me and the pain in my lower belly detonated like a grenade. The waiting room gasped. I folded in on myself, forehead slick, hands clamped over my stomach. Cassian stared. He didn’t understand why I’d gone down so easily. Why I was curling into a ball on a clinic floor, white-faced and shaking. He didn’t know that, two hours earlier, the child he’d wanted more than anything was already gone. In a room down the hall. He reached for me—instinct, guilt, maybe. I twisted away from his hand like it burned. “Cassian.” My voice was gravel. “Give her whatever you want. However much. I won’t say another word about it.” “Never.”He looked frozen, as if those words had deeply shocked him. But I didn’t look at him. I braced myself against the column and walked out of that clinic on sheer spite alone. I had an appointment to keep. The best divorce attorney in Manhattan worked out of an office on East 65th. I wasn’t going to miss it.
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