If he had fallen in love with someone else, he could have simply told me. I would have stepped aside. There was no need for all of this.
After I finished the medicine, Ermanno kissed the tears from my face, then dismissed the staff and undressed me himself, drawing my bath with practiced hands.
He had done this for me countless times without complaint. In the beginning, I'd felt embarrassed and tried to call someone in to help.
But he'd gazed at me with open adoration. "A body this beautiful? I'd never let anyone else so much as glimpse you."
"You're mine alone."
Every detail of my daily life, large or small, he insisted on handling personally, and he seemed to relish every moment of it.
What made it rarer still was that in three years of marriage, he had kept no one but me. His household staff consisted entirely of men. There wasn't a single woman to be found inside the compound walls.
Ermanno was young and held the highest seat of power any man could claim. Even Don Silvio Lombardi had once tried to send him a pair of women as a gift following a successful sit-down, a gesture of goodwill between families.