I don’t even care. I’m a little girl clutching the steam shovel hankie until it’s soaked in sweat—shattered all over again. This time, Grandma’s not here to stop me from crying, and I lose myself in sobbing, unable to stand, falling to my knees in the sewage-soaked mud. None of the men comfort me. They don’t know what to do with a woman’s grief.

My brother lets two guys help him out of the hole, then tells Sergio, “I say who lives and who dies.”

“Let Lucari live and see how far that gets you with these people.”

There’s a pause before the answer. I pick up my head. Through the layer of tears, I see the men leaning on their shovels with their jaws set. They want Dario dead. I’ll have nothing. Not even the man who killed her.

“We can’t!” Massimo shouts. “If we kill him, we lose access to the rest of those women. And you need my consent to marry her. You’re not getting it.”

“No, buddy, you’re not getting it,” Sergio says with a hint of compassion. “They’re all dead. All of them. Okay? Your father already gave her to me. I don’t need shit to call in the first promise.”

Massimo looks defiant but says nothing. Sergio’s right. He knows our rules. I’ve been sold to him already. The only thing keeping him from taking me is that I have a living husband.

That can be resolved.

If Sergio’s willing to take me broken, he can take me when I become a widow.

Still, I don’t fall into blind sobbing for myself or the freedom I’ll never have.

My tears are for my mother and the man who let her rot in a hole while saying he loved me.

Massimo stalks to the car, head down like a man with the weight of a crown on it.

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

SARAH

My energy’s been sucked out of me through my lungs and the tiny ducts in my eyes. My head throbs. The blankets over me are trapping hot, wet air.

Outside, a driver leans on their horn.

Orange bursts inside my eyelids. Daytime. Sun right through the window. Mid-morning. The apartment in Murray Hill. The room of an innocent child named Sarah Colonia.

Facts scroll across my mind like the ribbon at the bottom of the news screen.

You are my mother.

They have Oria.

Dario is as good as dead.

Sergio will lay his claim.

No other man will have me.

The last fact is a surprise. I didn’t know that last night, but I do now.