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I start breathing faster. “Mia would never do that to our baby. She knows this is all part of the plan for us to be together. She trusted me to make this happen for us.”
Giulia smiles wider, glee etched in every line of her face. “Mia’s been crying on my shoulder night and morning about how you tricked her into getting pregnant. What a cruel and stupid man you are, Lazzaro. Do you suppose that any woman on the planet could forgive you for such an appalling thing?”
I expected Mia to be angry with me. I knew she’d shout and call me names, but I thought once we got through that, she’d see that it solved all our problems.
I’m locked in a cage, and I can’t remind her she’s loved. Our baby is loved. She’s not alone because she has me.
“Mia, darling,” Giulia says in an affected voice. “I’m so sorry that your twisted, disgusting stepfather was sleeping with both of us, trying to get us both pregnant. You got caught up in his sick plan to humiliate the Bianchis. And now where is he? He’s run away.”
My chest heaves. “You lying bitch. I haven’t laid a finger on you in months.”
Giulia gives an eloquent shrug, smiling from ear to ear. “That’s not what she thinks now, and who’s going to tell her otherwise? Who’s going to tell Mia that she’s loved and she should keep the baby?” She glances up and down my black-and-blue body, scorn filling her eyes. “You?”
I slam my fists against the bars, trying to smash my way through them and get to her. “Why are you doing this, Giulia? Why can’t you let us be happy? You don’t care about me, and you never have.”
“You humiliated me in front of my friends and family. I’m the laughingstock of this city, and you’re going to pay for my humiliation. First, I’m going to make you suffer, and then every trace of you is going to be wiped off this planet. It will be like you never existed. It’s not like you achieved anything in your worthless life. No one is going to mourn you. Not me. Not your brothers. Not your precious Mia.”
This bitch really knows how to go in for the kill. “My brothers will wage war on your family if you murder me in cold blood. They hate me most of the time, but blood is blood.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I guess we’ll find out.” Giulia turns on her heel and strolls out with the confidence of a woman who’s getting everything she wants.
Rage boils over in my chest, and I shout after her, “You don’t know your daughter very well if you think she believed anything you said to her about me.”
My wife turns back to me. “I’ve known my daughter for eighteen years. I know every single one of her weaknesses. Her fears. Do you really think that you learned all there is to know about my daughter while she was giving you a lap dance in a lilac wig?”
I wasn’t expecting that, and Giulia smirks as she witnesses my shock. There’s no way that Mia told her mom about working as a stripper. There’s noway.
Giulia gives me a pitying smile. “Don’t fool yourself that you know Mia better than I do, Lazzaro.”
I beat my fist against the bars. “I want to talk to Mia.”
“In your dreams. Enjoy your little holiday down here. While it lasts.”
I stick my fingers through the bars of the cage and rattle them. “Then I want to talk to Rieta. Send Rieta down here.”
Rieta is the only other reasonable member of this family, and she knows how much Mia and I care for each other. She’ll be mad at me for the trick I pulled with the birth control pills, but she’ll listen to me. I’ll explain that it was the only way for Mia and me to marry and become a family.
She starts walking again. “What you want doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Screw you, Giulia.” I pull the wedding ring off my finger and throw it through the bars. It bounces twice, rolls across the concrete, and comes to rest at her feet.
My wife glances at it, and just keeps on walking.
As Giulia disappears through the door, I hear her say, “You can go in now. I’m finished with him. Get the papers signed before you break all his fingers.”
A moment later, Marzio, Tomaso, and Roberto step into the basement. All three of them are carrying baseball bats and are wearing protective gear.
I sneer at them. Three against one, and they’re still terrified I’m going kill them with my bare hands. “You three stink of fear.”
Roberto unlocks the cage and steps back. “Come on then, dickhead. Fight your way out of here if you can.”
All three are hitting their palms with their bats. I stare past them to freedom. Mia’s out there.
I pull open the door and step out of the cage, unarmed and unprotected, and spread my arms, the hunger to get to my girl fueling my appetite to fight.
“Bring it on, assholes.”
15
