Love? He loves me?
“And now you will die for your stupidity.”
Aware I am heronlylifeline, Valeria looks at me, but her silent pleas barely register as I call Giovanni’s name. He doesn’t look at me. He can’t. His focus is locked on his target like a predator, and every fiber of his being screams violence.
Valeria’s confidence is now stripped bare, but it doesn’t matter. Giovanni’s rage is too out of control to reel back in.
I doubt I have what it’ll take to make him see reason, but I have to try. This is about more than me. It is about more than all of us.
“I’m pregnant.” My confession fires from my mouth like a gunshot.
This time, my bait hooks the fish. Giovanni’s eyes snap to me, and the silence that follows the deathly bob of his Adam’s apple feels endless. Valeria stiffens before her lips part in victory.
I don’t pay her fanning feathers any attention. This situation is too volatile for me to remove my eyes from Giovanni for even a second.
His finger is still hugging the trigger, and it’s three-quarters compressed.
“You’re pregnant?” I’d describe his voice as broken, though not necessarily disbelieving.
I wet my lips before murmuring, “Yes.”
Giovanni stares at me like he’s reading the truth on my face, and then his gaze drops to my stomach, where it lingers like my confession is the only thing anchoring him through the storm endeavoring to swallow him whole.
My steps are thunderous as I race to the dresser. With shakyhands, I pull out the test I hid a second before he burst into my room like the hour we’d spent apart was more like a decade.
When I hold it out for him, he drinks it in slowly, like it’s a sacred artifact worth millions. He scans the result, and although it relights the fire in him, the flames are nowhere near as ferocious since they’re watered down by the weight of what this means for his family.
His father now has the chance to meet the heir of his eldest son’s legacy.
“I’m pregnant,” I repeat, softer now, because I need him to understand how this changes everything. “If this child is Valeria’s”—that hurt to say more than you could ever imagine—“do you want him or her to grow up hating you? Do you want your son or daughter to never forgive you because you couldn’t control your anger about something their mother did to me?”
His expression morphs as the storm disintegrates before my eyes. He loosens the fist tangled in Valeria’s shiny locks and lowers the highness of his shoulders.
Since we’re not fully out of the woods yet, I push forward, my stance stable but also fragile. “You don’t want a life like that for your child, Vanni,” I say confidently. “I grew up hating my father, and I’ve never even met him. Don’t force your child to walk the same path. Give him or her the best start possible. Spare their mother.”
The furious delivery of his words skates goose bumps across my skin. “She isnotmy child’s mother.”
“You don’t know that,” I fire back, heartache in my tone. “None of us know that.” I ignore the hope flaring through Valeria’s eyes. “I wish I could give you a definite answer, but I can’t. All I can do is stop you from making a mistake that will change the course of your child’s life.”
The tear that topples down my cheek reaches him more than words ever could. In under a heartbeat, he crosses the room, falls to his knees, then squashes his forehead to my stomach.
My claim of bilingualism is put to the test when he mutters words into my stomach. I don’t know every word he speaks to his child. He’s talking too fast. But the portions I catch make his intent known.
His child will be raised with the love of both a father and a mother.
When he lifts his eyes to me, wordlessly announcing who he wants to fulfill the role of mother, I weave my fingers through his hair, grounding him, and then glance down at Valeria.
She’s still frozen on the floor with her mouth ajar.
I wait for her gaze to meet mine before giving her a look that says everything:Go. Now.
She appears as if she wants to argue, but the sight of Giovanni on his knees, silently pleading for me to be his rock through his latest crisis, silences her.
After standing on shaky legs, she slips out without a sound.
Five seconds later, the softness of the bedding caresses my curves, and Giovanni buries his head between my legs.
29
