Rocco was silent, but he made the same sign.
“All right,” Brando said, releasing a heavy breath. He tapped his head against the seat for a moment before relaxing.
He didn’t relax for too long. I continued to make them talk to me, and when one refused, another man touched his wound to stir him.
Rocco went to touch Uncle Tito and he said, “Touch me once more and I will snap your finger in two!”
Despite the reassurances, the panic that lived below the surface stormed, making my heart palpate, and every instinct in me pricked with sharp needles. In the darkness Brando’s face looked ghostly. The shadows underneath his eyes were too dark. His lips were too pale.
“Brando,” I said, grasping his arm. I said his name three more times before his lids fluttered open, gaze finally finding me. “Don’t you dare die on me, my angel. Stay with me.”
He closed his eyes again.
“Brando…I have to tell you something.”
I had to tell him anyway, and for some reason the words exploded out. Wrong time, wrong place, but I felt so helpless, and it was the only thing he feared. Some irrational part of me hoped he would get angry enough to rise to the challenge.
His eyes drifted open slowly, but they didn’t close. “We were not protected,” he repeated almost stupidly.
I shook my head. “No, my doctor, she wanted to try something new. And…well, I wanted to see if my body could do the natural thing before I started again. Then I forgot—after Greece. But it was only that night on the floor.”
I had been on birth control ever since I was young. I danced so much that I couldn't menstruate, and it became detrimental to my health, causing deficiencies. Birth control was the answer. It had induced my first period when I was seventeen. And I had been on it ever since, after that first time.
Brando knew this and was confident that we were always protected. But I had become curious. Could my body follow the natural course of things? I craved the insurance that it could.
“I didn't plan on you being home when I tested the theory,” I said defensively. “All of the unexpected mess we found ourselves in threw me. But we were protected up until that day.”
“Four times, Scarlett.” He reminded me of how many times we had been intimate that night. “Five. That time this morning.”
Uncle Tito became Dr. Sala and started asking questions. Rocco started to discuss baby names, muttering to himself.
Brando sat up, the look on his face fathomless. “Enough!” he said, stopping me from answering Uncle Tito’s questions and Rocco’s declaration of love for the name Michelangelo.
For as free as we were with each other, and for as much as he liked to tease me about morals, Brando was strictly traditional when it came to me. The men in the backseat discussing our private matters, doctor or not, drove him mad. Then there was the chance that those four—five—times could result in a pregnancy.
The three men started to argue.
“I am a doctor!”
“She is my wife. This is between us!”
“There is nothing wrong with ‘Michelangelo.’”
“All right! All right! All there is to do now is wait.” I put an end to the conversation.
Brando put a hand to his chest, and he seemed even more sallow.
“Brando! What's wrong?”
“Forget the fucking bullet wounds. Tell them that I’m having a heart attack.”
No one fell asleep after that.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Scarlett
Dario and Romeo held me up after they took Brando away. I crashed, and I couldn’t find the energy to stand. We were given a suite in the maternity ward—ironic,sì?—to wait after Dario and Romeo made arrangements with whomever. Each wounded man was taken to a different floor, all but the one they were supposed to be on.
