“Let them worry.”
His hand slides to my growing belly, fingers splaying possessively over the gentle curve. “How’s our little one today?”
“Active. I think all this business talk is stimulating.”
“Good. I want our child to be engaged with the world, and curious about everything.”
The book arrives exactly forty-eight hours later, delivered by Klaus’s preferred courier service in protective packaging that could survive a bombing. Even thicker than it appeared on camera, the volume weighs at least three pounds and contains nearly six hundred pages of dense German text.
I flip through sections, noting detailed diagrams of fetal development, charts comparing different birthing positions, extensive footnotes referencing European medical studies.
“Jesus,” Alaric observes, watching me struggle to hold the massive book. “Klaus wasn’t exaggerating about comprehensive.”
“This is going to require serious concentration. The medical terminology alone will slow me down considerably.”
“Where will you read it?”
“The library, I think. I can close the door and focus completely without interruptions.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Weeks, probably. Maybe months if I really want to understand everything thoroughly.”
Thursday afternoon finds me settling into my chosen spot. It’s the wingback chair by the east window where afternoon sunlight creates perfect reading conditions.
The library smells like leather and aged paper and the fresh flowers Maria arranges weekly. I can hear Alaric’s voice through the closed door as he handles conference calls in his office.
I’ve gathered my German-English medical dictionary, a notepad for unfamiliar terms, and a glass of the herbal tea Dr. Patterson recommended for morning sickness.
Chapter one discusses prenatal nutrition with characteristic German precision. Every vitamin analyzed, every mineral requirement calculated, every potential dietary consideration examined from multiple angles. The scientific approach appeals to me—facts rather than opinions, research rather than folklore.
I reach for my dictionary only twice in the first ten pages, pleased with my comprehension level.
Chapter two covers fetal development month by month with illustrations that fascinate and overwhelm me simultaneously. According to the text, our baby is now approximately ten centimeters long with fully formed fingers and toes. The nervous system develops rapidly at this stage, and the child can already make small movements.
The clinical descriptions make our pregnancy feel more real somehow. Not just morning sickness and clothing adjustments, but actual human development happening inside my body. A person growing from cells into someone who will eventually call me mother.
I’m completely absorbed in a detailed section about fourth-month development when something changes in the air around me.
A scent drifts through the library that makes every nerve ending in my body scream immediate danger. Expensive cologne with notes of bergamot and cedar. Rich, distinctive, unmistakable.
The same cologne that clung to silk ties and Egyptian cotton shirts. The same scent that filled elegant restaurants and exclusive hotels during my years with him. The same fragrance that lingered on pillowcases after nights I tried to forget.
My blood turns to ice in my veins.
Every primitive instinct screams at me to run, but my body has completely forgotten how to move. The German pregnancy manual trembles violently in my hands as primal terror floods my nervous system.
It’s impossible. He’s dead. I was at his funeral. I watched them lower him into the ground.
But that scent belongs to only one person in the entire world.
The heavy book slips from my nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a sound like thunder in the sudden silence. My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I can hear nothing else as I slowly, slowly raise my eyes toward the library doorway.
Dante stands there.
Very much alive.
Thinner than I remember, with new scars cutting ugly lines across his left cheek. And wait, did he try to have…plastic surgery?
