Love Drowns In the Lake

In six years of marriage, Dante Moretti betrayed me three times. First, at an underground casino, he slept with a girl and claimed he must take responsibility for her. Second, to please her, he locked me in a warehouse for three days when I was seven months pregnant. Our baby’s heartbeat stopped. Third, when the girl fell ill and needed my kidney, he strapped my ventilator-dependent mother into his sports car and raced along a cliff highway. I knelt and begged: “I’ll donate it. Let my mother go. I’ll do anything.” Dante smiled and pressed the remote. The car crashed through the guardrail. I watched my mother fall into the lake. “Remember this,” he said. “This is what happens if you make Isabella suffer.” “Obey me, and everything can go back to normal.” But I knew there was no going back. Dante, there would never be a future between us.