He had never loved me. Not from the very beginning. That was why he'd done everything in his power to keep me from carrying his child.
But if he felt nothing for me, why bother with the lie? Why keep it going for so many years?
I drifted back to our rooms like a ghost and threw every last thing connected to him into the fireplace.
The lovebird folding screen he'd given me. The rare books he'd hunted down from every corner of the city, first editions tracked through dealers and old debts called in. The countless letters we had written together, line by line, in the early years when I still believed.
I watched them curl and blacken, inch by inch, until there was nothing left. Only then did the pressure in my chest ease, just slightly.
No. Not enough. How could I have forgotten?
I stormed into Ermanno's study like a woman possessed and found it on his desk, right where it always sat. The journal.
He had started it the day we met. Every little thing I liked, every habit, every preference, collected drop by drop over the years. By now it was thick as a fist.
I opened the yellowed pages, and every word made my eyes swell with pressure.