Her gaze lifts to mine, unreadable. “My period is late, Lorenzo.”
For a second, the breath leaves my lungs.
Everything I planned?—
The carefully worded speech.
The polite severing of ties.
The clean break that would have freed us both.
All of it is knocked violently off its axis by two simple words.
I search her face, but she gives nothing away. No triumph. No fear. Just a cool neutrality that feels like its own trap. She lets the silence stretch until it frays at the edges. And for the first time in years, I’m unsure what to do.
“How late?” I ask, my voice lower than I intended.
She exhales a humorless laugh, brushing a hand over her flat stomach as if she’s trying to feel something that isn’t there yet.
“I should’ve started three days ago.” Her gaze meets mine, sharp as broken glass. “I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but it looks like you might be getting what you paid for sooner than expected.”
The words hit like a slap.
What you paid for.
She means the contract. The alliance with her father. The expectation that she’d give me an heir because that’s what the Family demanded.
An image of Elizabeth flashes through my mind. The softness of her breath, the way she whispered my name in the dark. How she trusted me. How she swallowed the birth control pill I handed her this morning without a second thought.
Except it wasn’t a birth control pill. And I’m the one who swapped he her birth control with placebos. I’m the one who decided her future for her.
Fran says, “I’d guess we conceived when we went to Bali over Thanksgiving.”
A week before Sienna and Elizabeth came to Chicago, back when I was thinking like a Don instead of a man…
Fran’s words settle in my ears as the memory of Elizabeth taking the placebo fades. Guilt punches through my chest with a force that steals my breath.
Two women.
Two possibilities.
Two futures—one chosen for me, and one I’m trying to build in the shadows.
And I’m the one who’s turned it all into a tangle of secrets and lies. The kind of lies that can’t coexist without someone getting hurt.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Fran’s hazel eyes are full of tears.
When I don’t speak she says, “Father said I have to make an appearance tonight, so I suppose we should go for a bit.” She walks past me, grabbing her clutch with a steady hand. “Please don’t hold it against me if I don’t stay long. I’ve been nauseous all day.”
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
I watch her disappear into the hallway, the click of her heels echoing through her apartment like a closing door.
For the first time in a long time, I don’t know who I am in this story. The Don? The fiancé? Or the man who left a woman he actually wants sleeping alone in his bed?
I take a moment to center myself.
