Burned Out of the Moretti Name

All of southern Italy took it as fact that Lorenzo Moretti was in love with his wife past the point of reason. He was also keeping a much younger woman in Naples, one who people said looked the way Sophia had looked years earlier. When anyone asked, he said the girl was nothing more than a reminder of the woman he had loved most, and he gave orders through the household and the business that word of her was never to reach Sophia. Sophia found out she was pregnant and went to his office to tell him herself. She stopped outside the door because a young woman was speaking inside. Through the gap where the door had been left ajar she could see her, wearing Lorenzo's jacket and holding his glass, asking him whether she was there only because of the resemblance. He told the girl not to compare herself, that she could never be what the other woman was. Sophia walked back down the corridor without a sound and told no one what she had seen. That night she called her mother and said she had decided something. What she wanted was a fire, one nobody was expected to walk out of, and afterward Sophia Moretti would be dead as far as anyone in Italy knew.