Luca Ferretti, his chin lifting with that micro-tilt of reckless defiance: So the child's from this guy. Congratulations.
And then Simone himself, performing the role of the faithful husband with the same practiced ease he brought to every lie: Come on, boys. I'm just helping out. You trying to drive my wife away?
His words landed like a command. The associates fell silent, the way they always did when the Boss spoke. They liked his comment. They stopped talking.
Except Rocco.
Rocco, who had been Simone's shadow since they were boys running through the same streets, who had grown up in the Valente household after his own father was killed, who had never once looked at me without making it clear that I didn't belong.
Rocco cracked the knuckle of his right index finger. I could almost hear it through the screen.
Come on, man, don't act like that. She's not worth it. Just cut her loose. You've been with Silvana since high school, and everyone knows you can't let her go. Stop fooling yourself.
He had never liked me. He always thought I wasn't good enough for his brother in all but blood. Not as beautiful as Silvana. Not as sharp. Not as right. To him, I was a Ferrante girl who had married above her station, and the sooner the alliance was dissolved, the sooner Simone could stop pretending.
I had always let Rocco say what he wanted, for Simone's sake. I had swallowed his contempt at Sunday dinners, smiled through his pointed silences, pretended not to notice when he turned his back to me in rooms full of people who were watching to see if I would break.
But I could speak for myself now.
I pressed my thumb against the inside of my wedding ring. Turned it. One slow, deliberate rotation.
Then I typed a response and sent it through the same network that had carried Silvana's triumph to every wife, mistress, and associate in three boroughs:
Don't worry. That's going to happen soon.
I chose two images. The first was my pregnancy ultrasound, the grainy black-and-white photograph of the child that had been alive inside me that morning. The second was the certificate from the clinic. The document that confirmed what I had done. What I had chosen. What could not be undone.
I sent them together, with four words underneath:
Finally letting go.