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I racked my brains, trying to remember who had handed me that drink. But the only details that remained in my memory from that night was Marco. His words, his touch, his face, his body.
Everything else had been drowned out.
I could not remember if it had been a man or a woman. I should have known something was wrong in that moment. Nobody ever told me to take drinks to people on the club floor. I only ever served drinks behind the bar. I was not a waitress.
Had they slipped something into the drink before they handed it to me? Or had someone slipped something into it as I’d walked through the club to the Blue Room? It would definitely have been possible, given how closely pressed the crowd had been.
Or maybe the drugs hadn’t been in that drink at all. Maybe he had already had a spiked drink earlier?
I desperately wanted the latter to be true, as if it would absolve me of some blame.
But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t. And I knew it wouldn’t change the fact he’d spent that entire night with me.
Or that I’d not reminded him of that night. And now it was too late to do it. Now he would think I had something to do with drugging him.
Even if he didn’t accuse me outright, doubt would creep into his mind. The same doubts his mother had about me.
How could I ever tell him I was pregnant now? He would do the math, and know that it was me who was to blame for keeping him from his home and from his sister that night.
And how could he believe I was innocent when I full well knew I had tampered with his phone and helped Toby with that stupid scheme of his?
I wished I could turn around in bed to face him, whisper for him to wake up so I could tell him, but I was too much of a coward. And I couldn’t bear to disturb his slumber, not after the rough day he’d already had.
When morning came, I felt gritty eyed and sick, but I pretended to be fine for his sake, and got dressed as normal for the family breakfast.
Mindful of my pregnancy scan later, I chose a skirt and blouse instead of my usual dress.
Chiara did not join us in the breakfast parlour. Vittoria ordered for a tray to be sent up to her room.
“Chiara will not be going to school today, but that doesn’t mean she is ready to be disturbed,” she said in a clipped voice, her every word a barb pointed at me.
“She might enjoy a little cheerful company,” Marco said.
“And I’ll make sure she gets it,” Vittoria retorted.
I was too tired to join the conversation. My stomach churned. I nibbled on some dry toast to make a farce of eating so that Marco would not notice something was up.
But the toast made my stomach queasier. I put it aside and sipped some tea instead. The silence at the breakfast table was deafening. I was fighting the urge not to run to the bathroom to throw up.
Should I come clean now about the baby? Maybe I should insist Marco come upstairs with me before he went to work today and get it out in the open. In my heart, I kept wishing he would be the kind of man who would want to come to the first scan with me.
But what if he wasn’t? What if he didn’t want me having his baby?
And it meant I would have to tell him I was three months along—I would have to confess our first night together had been the night of the break in.
And the thought terrified me. I could not bear for this brief happiness to end. Not when we were just starting to trust each other as a couple. I could not bear to let him go. Or to let him down.
And I had seen flashes of his temper. Right now, Marco was balancing on a knife’s edge, trying not to give in to his own grief and guilt and rage.
I could not tip him over the edge. Where would he vent his rage? On me? On Toby? On those kids who’d given his sister those drugs?
I could not do that to him. I wouldn’t. I had to find some better way to tell him.
“Excuse me,” I gasped, rising from the table shakily to hurry towards the bathroom, where I threw up as quietly as I could.
When I returned to the breakfast table, his mother ignored me, but Marco gave me a querying glance.
I was saved from having to make some excuse by the housekeeper bustling into the room with an enormous crystal vase of flowers—burgundy dahlias, champagne-coloured roses, orchids, and deep purple calla lilies, the sort of stunning towering bouquet one saw at special events.
