“My father’s.”
“No, Dante. The stork was Sicilian.”
His mouth tightens. “You think you know what happened.”
My skin goes cold. He’s going to do it. He’s going to stand in a hallway beneath portraits of his ancestors and talk about my father like the story belongs to him.
I feel something inside me shift. The crack. A hairline opening.
I hold still. “I know enough,” I say.
“No. You don’t.”
“There it is. Every guilty man’s favorite sentence.”
“You weren’t there.”
I narrow my eyes. “I was near enough.”
“Near enough isn’t there.”
“You would know. You were supposed to arrive later.”
He goes still. “What did you say?”
I should stop. Truly. This is the moment when strategy should step in, wearing sensible shoes and reminding me that I’m pregnant and currently alone with a man whose impulse control has historically been poor enough to become fatal.
Strategy is delayed, however. Rage arrives first.
“I said,” I answer, each word precise, “you were supposed to arrive later.”
His face closes. The false charm is gone now. Good. I prefer monsters without varnish.
“Careful, Evie.”
I tighten my grip on the fabric. “Don’t say my name like you have a right to it.”
His gaze drops again. This time, not only to my stomach. To the curve of the dress. To the evidence that his father has touched what Dante considers his.
A hot, clean hatred moves through me, so pure it frightens me. Not because I simply hate him. That part’s easy. Because for one second, the hatred gives me a solution.
I see them.
The scissors in Teresa’s sewing basket.
The letter opener on the table at the end of the hall.
The bronze bust beside the music room doors. I could pick it up. I could swing. Pregnancy shifts one’s center of balance, but rage compensates.
There are guards not far away. Alessandro would intervene. The council would move. The twins...
No.
The thought dies.
Not because he doesn’t deserve it. Because I’m no longer a woman with only my own consequences. That’s the prison inside the prison.
My hand moves to my stomach before I can stop it.
