She dropped passive-aggressive remarks about Elena’s age.

She smiled with an icy politeness that wounded far more deeply than any open insult could have, the particular cruelty of a woman who never says the cutting thing directly and so can never be confronted for saying it.

And Alex, who had been raised to care above almost all things about the continuation of the family name and legacy, began, under the steady drip of his mother’s disappointment, to view his own marriage not as a partnership he cherished but as an obstacle standing between him and the heir he was supposed to produce.

It was Beatrice who finally pushed him over the edge, one evening when he was still torn, still capable of choosing differently.