Page 26 of Broken Trust

Conti leans toward me. “Dante,” he murmurs, “you can still back out of the rest.”

I shake my head.

Because here's the truth, the one I've been circling for months. I cheated on Gia. I lied to her face for a year. I let her sister carry my child and told her it came out of a lab. I stood in that garden and let her relatives tear her apart, and I didn't say a word. Gia lost her home, her family, her marriage, and her dream of a baby, all because of me.

Losing a house and some money isn't punishment. It's barely a start.

“Give them what they want,” I tell Conti. “All of it.”

“Dante…”

“All of it. Then they leave, and we never have to see them again.”

Conti studies me, sighs, and pulls out his own pen.

It takes another twenty minutes of signatures and initials, and by the time we're finished, my hand is cramping. Moretti gathers everything into a neat pile and taps the edges straight.

Mia is the first to crack. She lets out a squeal and throws her arms around her mother's neck.

“Paris, Mamma! Didn't I say he'd fold?”

“You did, cara.” Mamma pats her back, beaming, and for once the smile reaches her eyes. “We'll have lunch at Da Vittorio to celebrate. I've already booked the corner table.”

“And then shopping.” Mia jumps up and grabs her handbag. “I need a whole new wardrobe. Nothing I own is right for Paris.”

They're talking over each other now, about apartments in the Marais and a dress Mia saw in a magazine, and I sit there listening to them spend my daughter's future like a lottery win. Conti shoves his papers back into his briefcase so hard the clasp snaps.

Someone knocks.

Moretti's assistant, a young guy in gray, leans in apologetically. “Excuse me, Signora. There's a courier downstairs. He says he has an urgent delivery for you, and he was told you'd be here.”

Mamma frowns. “For me? Nobody knows I'm here.”

“He was very insistent. He says it's from your husband's lawyer.”

A minute later a thin man in a motorcycle jacket is shown with a helmet under his arm. He checks Mamma's face against a photo on his phone, hands her a large brown envelope, has her sign his tablet, and leaves without another word.

Mamma slits it open with one long red nail. She reads the top page, and I watch the blood drain out of her face until her lipstick is the only color left on it.

“Mamma?” Mia says. “What is it?”

Mamma doesn't answer. She turns to the next sheet, then another, flipping faster, her fingers starting to tremble.

Mia grabs the papers from her and reads them herself. Her mouth falls open.

“Pa's divorcing you?”

“Keep it down,” Mamma hisses.

“He's leaving you!” Mia gets louder, not quieter. “It says here there's a prenup. That you walk away with nothing but what you owned before the wedding.” She raises her head, confused. “What did you own?”

Mamma rips the papers back. “Not a thing,” she says through her teeth. “My mother was a seamstress.”

Mia skips to the end, and her jaw drops. “Who's Chiara?”

Mamma turns her face to the window.

“He's moving into the apartment on the lake,” Mia reads, “with a Signorina Bellini.” Her head jerks up. “Chiara from accounts? Mamma, she's twenty-nine. She's younger than me.”