My car had been stopped in the middle of the road. The woman's wailing outside shattered the quiet rest I'd been trying to take.
I had just returned to the city with Donna Vittoria from our months in Palermo. I'd left her residence and was heading back to the Moretti compound when, right at the gates, a woman's sobbing brought my armored sedan to a halt.
She had a coquettish face, dressed plainly, with only a thin silver chain at her throat and a belly round and heavy with child. Tears glistened in her eyes as she stared at the tinted windows, looking so pitiful that people on the sidewalk had already stopped to gawk. Two of our soldiers flanked the car but hadn't moved her. They wouldn't touch a pregnant woman without my word.
Through the window, she watched me sit motionless inside and dropped to her knees on the pavement, pressing her forehead to the ground. "My lady, please. Give Gianna Valenti a place to belong."
"The child I carry is the heir's flesh and blood. I am alone in this world. I need no title for myself, but the baby in my womb is the heir's only child. He cannot go unrecognized."