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"You believe I would have pressured you to get pregnant before you wanted to, before it was safe?"
"Yes."
"That is bullshit."
I laugh, though the sound is hollow. "This morning proves the opposite."
"In what way does my concern about your health prove that I would willingly put it at risk?"
"Because you weren't concerned aboutmyhealth, only the viability of my reproductive system."
"They are one in the same."
"No, they are not." The longer we talk, the more my fury dissipates and is replaced by sorrow. "There is no scenario in which you sending me to a fertility specialist without consulting me is an expression of concern formywellbeing."
"Lara said the appointment did not go well. Since I now know that did not mean you got bad news, what does it mean?"
Good strategy. When you don't have argument to make, change the subject.
Done with talking about what cannot be changed, I go with it. "It was a disaster but my reasons for thinking so are probably not the same as Lara's."
"Tell me about yours."
We've already covered the ground about me not knowing why I was at the clinic and how humiliating that was.
So, now, I tell him the rest. "Lynne, that's the nurse who first showed me into the exam room, was rude. Dr. Hewitt was worse though. If I was a woman with fertility issues, he is the last doctor I would want to consult about it."
"He's supposed to be the best in his field."
"Oh, he told me. Dealing with him is an awfully high price for the chance to have a baby."
"What do you mean?"
"His was arrogant, condescending and borderline psychotic. When I told him I was on birth control, he decided he would remove the IUD without my consent. When I argued, he told Lynne to sedate me and when I balked, he called in Dolph to hold me down."
With every word I speak, the aura of menace around my husband grows. "This Dolph laid hands on you?" My husband's tone is chilling. "Where the hell was Lara?"
"My bodyguard was waiting outside the door, like the good little Mancini lapdog she is."
"You are angry with Lara?"
He has to ask? Men! "What was your first clue?"
"You don't insult your security detail. Or anyone else." He pauses. "Except my father."
"I don't insult Patrizio."
Raff's right brow raises, calling me a liar.
I sigh. "I don'tmeanto disparage my father-in-law."
Unable to meet Raff's eyes after telling that whopper right after the first one, I look away.
Sometimes Idomean to insult Patrizio. He's worse than autocratic. He's selfish and arrogant and unfeeling. I've never seen him say one positive thing to either of his sons and he treats our son, Neri, like a not very interesting chess piece on the board ofhislife.
My biggest fear since getting married is that my husband, for all his faults, will become more like his father. Raff can be an arrogant jerk. Case in point: this morning. However, he is a loving father, and he has never treated me like I'm a brainless ornament, like his dad treats his mom sometimes.
Patrizio may respect women as soldiers and treat then the same as his other made men, but mafia wives and mistresses are another category to him.
