"He's right, Giovanna." Catarina drifted out in her nightgown, her voice dripping with sweetness. The hallway light fell across her throat and collarbone, and the marks there were vivid, unmistakable. She stood beside my husband in the corridor of my home as though she had been standing there for years. "Tomasso and I are just taking care of a physical need, that's all. I swear it won't affect your marriage. As long as he's willing to look after me and my child going forward, I'll be perfectly content."
She tilted her chin up and smiled. "Really. I would never try to steal him from you. I know the one he truly loves is you."
The hickeys on her neck and chest burned into my vision like needles, the pain driving straight from my eyes down into the pit of my stomach. I thought of the code Tomasso had invoked to bring her here. The sacred obligation. The honor of the fratellanza. And I thought of how easily sacred things could be hollowed out and worn as masks by people who had no use for them except as shields.
I looked at the two of them standing there, and I couldn't form a single word.