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Which was that I was a married twenty-one-year-old virgin with no end to that in sight because my husband had kissed me a mere five times since our wedding day and slept in a different bedroom with the door locked.

Humiliatingly, I knew this because one night during my early, depressive months in Chicago, I had tried to go to him only to find the way barred.

My sole sexual gratification for the past year came from my own hand in my bed or the shower.

After that kiss at the dinner table, I knew how I would be ending the night yet again.

“Dario is private,” I said, because it was the excuse I always used. “He wouldn’t want me talking about our sex life. He doesn’t like me talking about our life period.”

Alessia sighed. “It’s a crying shame, really. I’m dying to know what he’s like in bed. Especially if he’s as well endowed as they say.”

Heat prickled at the back of my neck. “They say?” I tried to ask innocently.

She waved her hand through the air dismissively. “Oh, all his lovers and admirers.”

“Past lovers,” I corrected automatically, the words whipping from my lips with tangible force.

Alessia shared a look with Renata and then nodded slowly. “I believe so, yes. Though there are a few women who imply he still favors them.”

“Is that so?” I purred. “And who might they be?”

“Now, Fia, you know some of the women like to gossip. No harm, no foul. No one believes them anyway,” Alessia, who was friends with everyone who was anyone in the Outfit, said, trying to placate me.

But she didn’t know, as I did, that it was a very real possibility that Dario was still seeing old flames or getting his jollies elsewhere.

Because he certainly was not getting them with me.

Humiliation poisoned my blood, enflaming me until I felt I would boil alive in my skin.

“I want names, Alessia,” I demanded, already moving away from my friends. “Text me. Excuse me, but I think I need some fresh air.”

Without waiting for a response, I turned away and walked out of the room, down the long main hall to the back of the house, and through the French doors onto the patio. It was a humid summer night, the greenery on the trellis above me swaying gently in the warm breeze.

Still, I shivered as I hugged myself, wondering how I ended up in this life.

A virgin wife with a husband who could barely stomach her presence.

For the first time in a while, I missed Niccolo with an acuteness that took my breath away. I could remember the way he’d looked at me, as if I was precious, as if he couldn’t wait to make me his.

My head dropped between my shoulders, and I sucked in a deep breath and tried to battle back the surge of sadness at the base of my throat.

I missed them all. Niccolo, Beppe, Ricco, and Papà. My aunts, their husbands, and my seemingly endless array of first and second cousins.

I even missed Sicily, the very same place I had been so eager to leave behind.

Nothing about my life or me was the same, and the loss of it all felt like a mass murder I would grieve for the rest of my life.

“No hostess should be outside alone at her own party,” a warm British accent spoke behind me.

I didn’t startle because I had heard the door unlatch and figured it would either be Bryson or Lily, my two most emotionally astute friends.

One of his hands found my shoulder and squeezed as he stepped up beside me to face the yard, his arm wrapped behind my neck. I leaned into it and into his side, relishing the comfort of physical affection I was so starved for.

Bryson allowed my silence for a good few minutes before he said, “You know, Fia, the first time I saw you was before that day you crossed the street to get to Maya. You were sitting on the front steps of this great house looking like a lost child waiting for her parents to pick her up. Your sadness . . . I could feel it from where I stood twenty yards away. And no matter how much time I’ve spent with you since, no matter the number of smiles you gift me or the laughter you stir in me, I always see that sad girl lurking in those lovely brown-green eyes. So I have to wonder, darling girl, if you are ever really happy?”

His speech hit me like an arrow through the heart, physically rocking me back on my heels so that he had to steady me with his hand at my shoulder.

“I was happy tonight,” I offered without looking at him, studying the marble statue of the goddess Minerva in the fountain at the middle of the garden, a wise owl perched on her uplifted arm.