With my mind made up, I snatch up the test, race into the bathroom, and tear open the packet. The box hits the floor with a thud as the test strip cools the heat roaring through my palm.
After following the instructions to the wire, I place the test stick on the vanity sink and wait the required amount of time.
Minutes have never felt like days until now.
When the alarm in my head goes off, I slowly approach the vanity. My breaths are ragged, and my heart feels like it’s about to break out of my chest.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I flip over the plastic strip that holds more power than it should.
As I stare at the result, my reflection fractured in the foggy mirror, one thought screams louder than all the rest:
Everything is about to change.
25
GIOVANNI
As one of the many corridors of the Caruso compound stretches before me, I retrieve my phone from my pocket and bring up the surveillance feed for my room. It’s instinct now—habit. The screen flickers before it presents an empty room. The sheets look rumpled, as if Valentina left in a hurry. Before my panic gets away from me, I notice the steam curling under the bathroom door. It licks at the wooden floorboards like smoke and switches my unease to need.
Valentina is showering.
What more incentive do I need than that to shake off my restless mood?
As my pulse kicks up, I increase my pace. I love taking Valentina hard and fast in the shower, but I also like taking care of her. I crave her shy smiles when she’s lavished like a princess as equally as I do the fiery vixen who emerges when she wraps her lips around my cock.
I’m about to enter the wing where the bedrooms are when Valeria steps into my path. She gleams at me like a predatordetecting the fresh blood of a virgin as her hand shoots up to my chest like she barreled me over.
“Vanni,” she purrs, her smile too over the top for the hour.
When her nails graze my chest, the dangling charms hooked on them cool my skyrocketing temperature. They’re similar to the charms you find on a bracelet, and they clink together when I snatch up her hand, yank it off my chest, and then drop it faster than a bomb.
She acts ignorant of my fury about being manhandled without permission. It’s a performance she knows well. “The charms are meant to boost fertility.” Her eyes gleam with fake sweetness, and her voice is syrupy. “Despite everything that’s happened, I’ve been praying with a local minister for Valentina’s pregnancy to be successful. You deserve an heir. It meanseverythingto you.”
My veins ice over as I work my jaw side to side. “No,” I say flatly. “It doesn’t.”
Her brow lifts, exposing the surprise glittering in her eyes. “Of course it does. It’s all you’ve ever wanted.”
“Not with Valentina,” I bite out. “With her, it’s about more than that.”
Her smile falters as confusion clouds her perfect face. There’s no denying Valeria’s attractiveness. She’s a beautiful woman who could have more than one schmuck eating out of her palm. I’ll just never be one of them. I’ve dated self-absorbed women before. They’ve never held my interest long enough to go back for seconds.
God invented kindness to be given freely, not traded. There’s strength in a woman who is both kind and confident—especially when she proudly owns every inch of herself.
Just thinking about Valentina’s luscious body and the confidence it yields thickens my cock. I love how her beauty feels alive under my hands when I grip it during a marathon fuck, and I’m done pretending otherwise.
“Giovanni—”
Valeria’s pleading tone rots in the air behind me when I sidestep her and continue down the hall. I’m not solely racing away because the longer I converse with Valeria the less time I’ll have to clean Valentina’s skin with my tongue. It’s to show her she has no power in this situation. No influence.
Even if she is the mother of my child, she isnotthe narrator of my story.
Sunlight spills across the floorboards when I enter my room at the speed of a rocket launching into space. Then disappointment hammers me when I spot Valentina in the corner of the space. She’s already dressed. Her hair is damp, and her skin is glowing from the shower products the head maid purchased specifically for her.
My cock hardens while recalling how many times I’ve tasted her bodywash over the past week, but the euphoria it instigates is short-lived since her eyes won’t meet mine, no matter how hard I strive for eye contact.
“I need to go.” She speaks fast, like the words might vanish if she doesn’t spit them out. “Work called. I finally got a shift. Because I missed so many last week, Alessandro rostered me on for a day shift. The tips will be less, but anything is better than nothing, right?”
I grit my teeth, stunned she’d lie to me. We have blockers up to stop our phones from being tapped. She can FaceTime her mother and get messages via the same app, but standard calls are impossible to receive within the compound’s walls without a specially designed phone.
