Page 275 of Ricardo

Her mouth trembles.

“I’m sorry I pulled you away from downstairs.”

“Nothing downstairs matters more than you.”

She looks down, and both hands close around the sleeves of her sweater. Her fingers twist in the knit, tightening until her knuckles pale.

“What is it?” I ask, putting one gentle finger under her chin to tilt her head up.

“I woke up sick this morning,” she says.

“I'm sorry for that,” I say, sympathetic. “Do you want me to call the doctor?”

She shakes her head.

“It's not the first time. I thought it was stress. The gala and Dante. Then last night. I kept explaining it away because there was always something to blame.” Her eyes meet mine. “It was easier, I guess, than admitting the truth.”

My heart stops.

“Victoria offered to get me a test.”

I cannot breathe.

I have faced guns, betrayal, blood, men begging, men lying, men dying with their secrets spilled on the floor in front of me. I have stood beside my son’s hospital bed and ordered him to stay alive because I could do nothing else.

None of it prepares me for Julia standing in my bedroom, terrified and brave, about to change my entire world once again.

“It was positive,” she whispers.

I stare at her.

At her pale face. Her swollen eyes. Her trembling mouth. Her hands twisted in the sweater.

Pregnant.

Julia is pregnant.

With my child.

The thought is too vast to fit inside me along with all that rage, fear, strategy, or any language I know. For a moment, Harrison disappears. Luca disappears. The Winthrops, the men in her apartment, the blood, the study downstairs, all of it falls away in the face of the impossible fact standing before me now.

My child.

Our child.

Then the world comes back all at once.

Julia is standing in front of me, carrying my child while danger circles close enough to leave roses on her table.

My hands tighten slightly against her face before I make them soften.

“I know,” she says quickly. “I know this is horrible timing. I know Dante is in the hospital, and you’re dealing with Harrison, and Mario is downstairs, and I don’t even know how far along I am. I haven’t seen a doctor. It could be early. I don’t know anything except what the test said, and I know you already have so much—”

“Julia.”

She stops.

I brush my thumbs beneath her eyes, caressing the redness where tears fell for my son.