turned my eyes from the window of the car and looked down at my stomach, tracing the small round bump. From the side, it looked bigger than it did from the front. At my last appointment, the doctor told me that the baby was the size of a lime, and that everything looked bene.
Everything did not feel fine, except for the happiness I felt whenever I thought about the baby, about our future—because I was looking ahead to a different time. A time when things would be different.
After the night at The Club, something in my husband’s eyes changed.
I had never seen it before. It was as if he had gotten an idea tattooed in his head, and he could not separate from it, like he couldn’t separate from his scorpions.
The man he was searching for was the one who had given him the tattoo.
I knew even if he found him, it would not bring back what he lost, or cure the world of anything. Corrado would never be satisfied until he accepted what had happened.
He tried to deny it was about the man killing his father. He said it was about men having respect, and I was sure some of that was true, but the man had spared his little sister. How could he not spare him? It went deeper, and he did not want to face it.
“Rispetto,” I muttered.
If Corrado was anything, he was a man of great honor and respect. He gave it, and he demanded it in return.
That night in The Club had changed more than his obsession with finding the man who had played a role in changing his life.
The morning after, I had walked into the kitchen first, preparing to have breakfast with Corrado before he left for the day. Martina was there spending time with his nonna.
She usually cursed me. This time she called me a goomah. What we called cummare in Italian, which sounded like goomah. A mistress. She started to laugh, but it faded when Corrado walked in right as she said it.
“Jealousy is a bitch,” I said to her. “And so are you.” It was the first time I’d ever responded to her low remarks. Anna told me I needed to put her in her place, or she would never stop. It was the first time she had ever disrespected me in front of Corrado, and that seemed even worse.
“At least I don’t act like a tramp,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Corrado cleared his throat. “Get out,” he said to her. “Get out and never step foot in my home again. If you disrespect my wife, you disrespect me.”
Martina looked at Teresa. She turned her face away. Martina started to cry, but she took her purse and left.
I stared at Corrado while he sipped on his coffee. He had been distant after we left The Club, but my instincts told me it was more than just what happened with the man he couldn’t find. It had to do with what had happened with the three men.
They had called me “the woman,” and it made sense after Martina had called me cummare. Those men must have thought I was Corrado’s mistress. The dress I had on. Where I was at such a late hour.
The good wives were home taking care of the house.
One thing I had learned from spending time in this mansion—these women enjoyed gossiping. It was not the first time I had heard about a woman who was not respectable.
“My daughter would not be out acting like a puttana,” Martina had said about a family member’s daughter who was out in a bar acting too freely. A man from the family had to send her home.
Even though this was modern day, to be respectable meant something to these men. They viewed the wives much differently than they viewed the mistresses.
The thought of my husband touching another woman made my blood boil. My mamma always said that jealousy had a shape, and it comes in the form of a vipera. But the poison only destroys the heart hosting it. I was full of deadly poison, but it did not feel dangerous to me—it was him I wanted to hurt when I thought of him hurting me in that way.
“I will kill you,” I said to him. It was plain and simple. In a language he understood better than English. The thought of him having a cummare made me start to burn, like I had never burned