Get rid of the girl before he gets her pregnant.
Looks like I’m too late.
My hand goes to my stomach. The mirrored motion hits both of us at once and a terrible kind of understanding passes between us. We’re women carrying babies in a world built by men. For one treacherous second, I almost pity her.
Then I remember why I came.
“I’m not here for him,” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“I’m not here to fight over Lorenzo.”
A humorless laugh escapes her. “That’s a relief, because I don’t have the energy.”
Despite myself, I nearly smile.
Instead, I step closer and lower my voice. “I’m here because my father threatened my baby.”
“What?”
“He wants you gone.” I hold her gaze. “And he made it very clear that if you don’t disappear, he’ll find another way to solve the problem.”
Birdie’s fingers curl against her stomach. “He threatened your child?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flash with horror. Real horror. Not performed. Not polite. Good. Let her understand the scale of the rot.
I continue before she can speak. “I was supposed to come here and scare you off. Threaten you. Humiliate you. Remind you that I am the wife and you are the mistress.” I let out a short, bitter laugh. “A little difficult when everyone with eyes can see who Lorenzo actually made a home for.”
Her face changes at that. It’s not softer. Just more wounded.
“Fran—”
“There is no need to spare me.” I cut her off cleanly. “I have known for some time that I was never his first choice.”
The words hurt less out loud than they did in my head. Maybe because once spoken, they stop being a fear and become a fact. Birdie looks like she wants to deny it but doesn’t. That earns her a sliver of my respect.
I fold my arms, though it is partly to hold myself together. “Listen to me carefully. Whatever is happening between you and Lorenzo no longer matters to my father. He sees only one thing—his standing. And if he thinks you threaten it, he will come for you.”
She shakes her head once, fast. “Lorenzo would never let that happen.”
That hurts because I can’t say the same.
“No,” I say. “He would not let it happen knowingly. That is not the same as stopping it in time.”
A flicker of fear moves through her eyes then. Good. I want her afraid. Because fear keeps women alive.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks.
I glance down at my stomach. “Because if I let my father use me like a weapon against another pregnant woman, then I become exactly what he raised me to be. And because I know what it is to be trapped in something a man calls protection.”
We stand there in the bright, beautiful room, two women bound to the same man in completely different ways, and the irony of it almost chokes me.
Birdie wets her lips. “What does he want me to do?”
“Leave.”
