The Lie That Fed Me novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Pink Pill
For five years, I slept with a man who whispered the same promise to me every night.
"Give me an heir, Giulia, and I'll give you the entire Ruggeri empire."
He'd say it against my neck, his mouth hot, right after making love to me.
I'd stay awake staring at the ceiling of our villa's bedroom in Mondello, one hand on my belly.
Every month, I bled.
Every month, I cried in the bathroom, silent, so the guards wouldn't hear me.
And every morning, I took the vitamin Sandro left next to my glass of water: folic acid, to prepare my body.
That October morning, the white bottle was open on the sink.
One of the pills had fallen to the floor.
It was pale pink.
Mine had always been yellow.
I bent down to pick it up.
It had tiny letters engraved on it that I didn't recognize.
I didn't say anything.
I tucked it into my fist and left the bathroom with my usual smile.
Sandro was in the dining room, with his coffee and the newspaper, the perfect gray suit, the gold watch on his wrist.
Thirty-six years old.
The heir of the most powerful organized crime family in Italy.
He stood up when I walked in and kissed my forehead.
"Did you sleep well, love?"
"Very well."
"We're having dinner with my mother tonight."
"Of course."
He stroked my cheek with his thumb.
He was very good at it.
It had always seemed like the gesture of a man who loved me.
I left at ten, with the driver, to "buy fabrics."
I asked him to drop me at the pharmacy on Via Libertà, where the pharmacist had known me since I was a girl.
He was a friend of my father's.
I walked in with the pink pill wrapped in a handkerchief.
"Dottore, I need you to tell me what this is."
He looked at it under the lamp.
It took him ten seconds.
Then he looked up, and I watched him go pale.
"Giulia. Where did you get this?"
"From my folic acid bottle."
"This isn't folic acid." He paused. "It's a contraceptive. One of the strong ones."
I grabbed the counter.
"Are you sure?"
"I've been in this business for forty years."
I walked out to the street without knowing how.
The sun hit my face and I felt nothing.
Five years.
Sixty months of pills.
Five years of gynecologists, of teas, of prayers, of candles in the cathedral, of tears and shrugged shoulders in front of his mother.
My husband, the one who swore he wanted a child, had been switching out my vitamins.
I went back to the villa with a dry mouth.
While Sandro was at his office in the city, I went into his study.
On his desk, next to a stack of envelopes, was his old phone, the one he left behind when he went out.
A notification glowing on the screen.
A message from his mother, Concetta.
"Tell the pharmacist in Bagheria to send me another fifty. This one's almost out."
I read it twice.
Then I sat down in his leather chair, my knees weak.
My mother-in-law knew about it.
My mother-in-law had looked me in the eyes for five years.
She called me useless, told me a woman without children is just decoration, and she knew.
My hands were shaking so badly I dropped my phone.
I picked it up.
And mine rang, inside my purse.
A social media alert.
Fabiola Lanza had posted a photo.
I knew her.
She was the daughter of one of the allied bosses, twenty-eight years old, who had been Sandro's girlfriend before me.
The photo was a black-and-white ultrasound.
Below it, her message, sweet and smug:
"Ten weeks. Sandro says he can't wait to meet the baby."
Below that, an avalanche of congratulations.
Two hundred hearts.
Forty comments from women of the family.
"Finally, an heir."
"Concetta must be so proud."
"Let it be a boy."
I set the phone down on the desk, face down.
I didn't cry.
That was the strangest part of all.
I was so cold inside that I could hear my own breathing as if it were coming from someone else.
I opened my contacts.
I scrolled down to the P's.
Piero Calabrese.
My ex, the man I left at twenty-four because my father died and the Ruggeri family asked for my hand.
The one who, for five years, had texted me once a month, without fail, every twelfth day, a short message: "I'm still here."
I never answered any of them.
I typed with cold fingers:
"Give me a month. Then I'll come to you."
I hit send.
The reply came in less than a minute.
"A month. On the thirtieth, I'll pick you up wherever you say."
I closed my eyes.
And then I heard the study door.
"Giulia," Sandro said, standing in the doorway, his hand on the frame and his eyes fixed on my hand holding the phone. "What are you doing in my chair?"
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