The heart of a man is devout.

What you're about to hear is based on actual events.

List their discretion is advised.

The mother looks not with hate into the face of the child, but disgust.

A deep frown is all she can offer the muleing thing, so recently pushed from her body.

It had been several hours of agony, suffered in the company of fools.

Those in attendance are her captors as much as her family, and there is more threat than love

in their eyes, when she hesitates to feed her infant daughter, Leonardo.

The midwife steps in and positions the bambinas mouth close to breast,

where eventually her small lips latch on, greedy and insistent.

So much like her father's lips on that night, the mother thinks, and is almost sick.

He is there, her husband, Mariano, the man who held her down and had his way with her,

and then in the ultimate act of perversion, he dragged the church into her life,

and her into the church. A man cannot rape his wife after all, even if he'd done so before they

wed. Also, there was always the nagging question that her parents had conjured,

which she instead want to live on the streets like some whore.

She clears her throat and all the family hushes.

Mariano moves forward sheepishly and smiles from his wife to his daughter and then back.

His is the face of a boy, for given a great misdeed, who is glad to be living out his second chance.

The mother asks the father if he loves the child. He nods, clasping his hands together and squeezing

them tightly in front of his chest. He wants so badly for this to work. It is then that a thick

wad of flem catches him in the left cheek, hanging in the mockery of a tear for a moment,

...