Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
God, I do look a mess. My hair is disheveled, and my lipstick is smeared around my lips. Mascara runs under my eyes.
A grin splits my face. I like this look on me. I wear it proudly. It reminds me of what we did, and that sends a fresh pang of desire straight to my core. My belly flutters when I recall how he tasted and how good he felt inside me. Nevertheless, the sharks are gathered outside, watching and judging. It wouldn’t be wise to face them without my armor in place.
I wet a paper towel and wipe away the mascara and lipstick before applying a dusting of face powder and eye shadow. I’m reapplying my lipstick when the door opens and Rachele walks in.
My hand stills in the middle of my action. I watch her approach in the reflection of the mirror, our gazes locking. Tearing mine away, I finish dabbing the lipstick onto my lips before capping the tube.
She stops next to me and takes a tube of lipstick from her bag. I fix my hair, doing my best to ignore her, but it’s not easy when her exotic perfume, something powdery with notes of ylang-ylang, seems to have crept into every corner of the room. The whole bathroom smells like her. She leans toward the mirror and applies more lipstick over the bright layer of red on her lips.
I step away to inspect my reflection.
There.
That will do.
“You know why he’s with you, right?” she asks, rubbing her lips together and wiping away a smudge of lipstick in the corner of her mouth with her pinky.
“As a matter of fact, I do.” I turn to face her squarely. “Do you?”
Snickering, she drops her lipstick in her bag and clips the clutch closed. “I don’t think you do.”
“What is your problem? You don’t want him, but nobody else can have him?”
She leans a hip on the counter and crosses her arms with a fluent, elegant motion. “Did he tell you why I divorced him?”
“You never loved him.”
“Love.” She scoffs. “Do you think my father cared if I loved Saverio when he arranged our marriage? Why would he allow me to leave the man he values most in his organization because I never loved him?”
My stomach draws tight with a nasty foreboding. I have an inkling I’m not going to like what she has to say.
She drags a gaze over me, pausing on my bump. “Saverio is only marrying you because he’s desperate to have a child.”
I frown, not connecting the dots, but then she steps closer and says, “And he can’t have any of his own.”
The blow is so vicious it feels as if the roof collapsed on my head. I go cold. The first sentiment that assaults me is pain. I hurt for Saverio. An ache spreads through my chest, eating away the elation of not a moment ago and leaving a heavy and bitter darkness in the place of the light.
Oh no, Saverio.
Then the meaning of Rachele’s words sinks in, and betrayal burns a path through my body. That’s why Saverio wants to adopt my child so badly. He’ll never have one of his own. He never wanted to raise this baby with me. It’s never been about being a good father. It hasn’t even been about me. Yes, protecting me is detrimental to keeping him out of jail. But then he discovered I came with added benefits—sex on demand and something he wanted but couldn’t have.
Shit.
I almost sway as the truth slams into me with the force of a sledgehammer.
It’s always been about my child.
“We had tests done,” Rachele says. “I didn’t fall pregnant after trying for five years, so…” She untangles her arms and waves a hand. “It turned out the problem was Saverio.”
So many things suddenly make sense—how frantic he was that I saw a doctor after he attacked me, how diligently he attended every ob-gyn visit and prenatal class with me, how proud he was of satisfying my cravings, how much effort he put into the nursery… He does everything concerning my baby in the extreme because this is the one and only chance he has at being a father.
Fuck.
How am I supposed to feel about that?
I understand his behavior when I look at it from his point of view, but what I can’t ignore is that he hid this very important fact from me.
Why would he omit the truth?
There’s only one explanation.
Because his intentions are less than noble.
Because from the moment he found out I was pregnant, he was scheming to take my child for himself. Marrying me is just a way of putting invisible handcuffs on me. Who’s to say he won’t organize a fatal accident to get rid of me once he has what he wants?
“Ask him,” Rachele says. “He kept the test results in his desk drawer. I guess it was so that he could read it again and again to convince himself it was true. That desk is the only piece of furniture he took with him when he moved out of our house. I wonder why. It’s curious, don’t you think? I bet my life it’s still there, right on top of the gold pen engraved with his name that my father gave him as a wedding present.”