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Sofia
Iwake up the next morning in my old bed in the guest room, my stomach knotting with nausea and my head hurting from crying. My whole body aches, and I want to believe that everything that happened yesterday was a bad dream.
As the memory of all of it comes rushing back in, though, I know that it wasn’t. My stomach turns over again, and I barely make it out of bed and to the bathroom in time to make it to the toilet, my insides turning out again as I vomit profusely.
I sink to the floor, covering my mouth with my hand as I try not to burst into tears. I feel so overwhelmed, and this is just one more thing that I don’t know how to begin to deal with. The conversation with Rossi in the hospital was bad enough, the loss of my mother’s necklace after he ripped it off of me and the way he made it sound as if I’d been the one antagonizing me. The embarrassment and fear of throwing up in front of everyone and realizing that my period was late.
I’d thought for sure that when Luca got home, at least that would be one thing that would be better. I’d been lookingforwardto him coming back. And then he’d walked into the kitchen, bloody from—what, exactly? Torture? I could only guess at what he’d been doing. Without bothering to clean up first, he’d hauled me into the bedroom and fucked me without the slightest concern—and come all over me. My hair. My breasts. All over my body and clothes. On my face.
And then he’d just walked away.
It left me feeling terrified. The way he’d acted—the way he’d talked to me, the things he’d said, the things he’d done. The blood on his hands and clothes while he’d fucked me, as if he hadn’t cared that he still had other men’s blood on him while he was inside of his wife.
I was wrong about him.It’s the only thing I can think of, over and over again. The man who took me up to the rooftop, who gave me a diamond bracelet while I was sitting in a bubble bath, who watched movies with me and made love to me—that wasn’t Luca. That was—some kind of temporary insanity, maybe. A brief flash of him being another kind of person. But not him.
Tears rise up in my throat, hot and thick, choking me. Those two men are so different from one another. Even if both were real—the Luca who can be cruel and brutal, the bloody man who tortures and kills,andthe man who is tender with me, who held me and whispered sweet things to me, who gave me pleasure beyond anything I ever imagined—I don’t know how to reconcile that. I don’t know how I could love both.
That’s the hardest part of it all—but I can’t ignore it. The Luca who was kind and gentle—I was beginning to fall for him. I know that I was. And it feels as if that tender, new emotion has been crushed. Destroyed.
Ifeel destroyed.
And then there’s the other problem to deal with.
I’m terrified to take a test. I know what the answer will be—there are only so many reasons I could be vomiting all times of the day with no other symptoms other than exhaustion and a missed period—especially when the timing of Luca flying home to me lines up so perfectly. I’d lost count of how many times we’d had sex that night and the morning after—and we hadn’t used a condom even once. Not a single time.
If I am pregnant, the ramifications of it are astronomical. I can see the contract I signed as if it’s floating in front of my eyes now, the paragraph that clearly stated in no uncertain terms:
If at any point in our marriage, I become pregnant, whether the child is the legitimate product of my union with Luca Romano or the result of infidelity, the pregnancy will be immediately terminated as soon as it is confirmed. If the pregnancy is not terminated, I understand that it effectively voids this contract. Luca Romano will no longer be responsible for, nor can he ensure, my safety or that of my child. My child nor I will receive financial support or protection. Luca Romano will not accept paternity of the child at any time. If an effort is made to establish paternity in the event of a non-termination, the child will be removed from custody and placed elsewhere.
It didn’t take a genius to know that “placed elsewhere” was a way of saying that any child I insisted on having that I tried to prove was Luca’s, or who later found Luca and insisted on being recognized, would be killed as quickly and efficiently as I would have been. It was just a means of not saying “murder” in a legal contract.
But we’d be lucky to make it that far. As soon as I tried to escape, my life and the baby’s life would be forfeit, immediately on the list to be eliminated. Luca had said that he had no desire to kill me if I tried to escape our marriage, only to bring me back, but would that extend to a circumstance in which I was pregnant? A condition of our marriage was that we would never have children.
And now I’ve broken that.Wehave, but Luca will never have to accept responsibility. I know enough about how this family works to know that.
I still need to take a test, but I already know. And I’m terrified of the confirmation because then I have to make a choice.
Even as I think it, though, I can’t see how there is any choice. A few days ago, I would have had hope that Luca might have had a change of heart, that he wouldn’t follow through on the terms of the contract. I don’t even fully understandwhyit’s there, and I’d hoped I could get him to clarify before I knew for sure. But after what he did yesterday, how he talked to me, I can’t trust him not to force me to follow through. That Luca was the old Luca, the one who treated me so roughly before our wedding, who was hard and cold towards me. Who tried to be my master, not my husband.
I feel betrayed by that short time where things were different, wherehewas different. I feel unloved and abandoned, completely alone. And as I touch my still-flat stomach, I think of the reality of having a child of my own, a little son or daughter.
Someone I can love unconditionally. Someone who could love me back.
Suddenly, with that thought, I can’t bear the idea of losing this baby.
I remember before the wedding, my last conversation with Father Donahue. I remember what he said to me.
Sofia, in the presence of the Lord and the Holy Mother, in memory of your father, I will do all I can to protect you and keep you safe. If there comes a day when you wish to leave Luca, all you need to do is walk through those doors, and I will find a way.
The next thought that I have is sharp and immediate, and absolutely certain.
I have to get out of here. I have to get to the church.
I saw Caterina put in the elevator code yesterday, and I’m almost certain that I know what it is. If I can get outside, I can hail a cab and get to the church. And after that, Father Donahue will help me.
I know he will.
* * *
