So the husband who had treated me like his whole world had already given his heart to someone else.
Fine, then. Heaven or abyss, I would make sure he never found me again.
——
I fled the safehouse in a blind panic, wandering aimlessly until the moon hung high before I finally made it back to the compound.
Rosa was waiting in the kitchen with the usual glass of warm medicine the family doctor had prescribed, ready for me to drink.
The faint metallic tang of blood hit my nose, and my thoughts drifted far away.
After our wedding, the family doctor had examined me and declared my constitution too weak to conceive easily.
Ermanno refused to watch me grieve. He called in specialists from as far as Chicago and Miami until one of them devised a rare remedy: medicine brewed with a man's own blood, said to strengthen the body at its root.
Without a moment's hesitation, he took a blade to his own chest and began brewing the tonic with blood drawn from over his heart, every single day.