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I swallow hard. “He’s not going to want to marry me,” I say softly, and my mother’s eyes narrow.
“You heard him.” She presses her lips tightly together. “In spite of your mistakes, he still wants to—”
“I’m pregnant.”
The words hover between us, and I can see that it takes a moment for the recognition of what I’ve said to sink in. Her mouth opens slightly, gaping a little like a fish, and then she shakes her head.
“You’re lying again. You’re not getting out of this, young lady—”
“I threw the test away, but I can take another one.” I tilt my chin up, trying not to look as scared as I feel right now.If this doesn’t work, David Carravella will be my husband.Something about that fills me with a dread that I can’t entirely explain, a feeling that of all the men it could be, this is the one I should want the least. It feels terrifying, to imagine that I could have met him so far away, in such completely different circumstances, and end up here like this after all. “I’m not lying.”
“Christ.” My mother hisses the word, another thing I’ve never heard from her before. “You’re determined to ruin us, aren’t you? As if what your father did wasn’t enough. Is it his?” She jabs her finger towards the room where David is waiting, and my stomach flips again.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, and once again, her hand cracks across the other side of my face. My knees almost buckle, and I reach up to touch the burning spot on my cheek with a whimper as tears fill my eyes. Idoknow, of course—it can’t be anyone else’s. But the pregnancy feels like my only possibility out of this—and if he knows it’s his, that possibility vanishes.
“You’re telling me it could be someone else’s?” My mother’s face is pinched with anger, more so than I’ve ever seen before. “My god, Amalie. I can’t believe I raised—”
She goes silent, taking a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she says finally, and I stare at her.
“What do youmean, it doesn’t matter—”
My mother rounds on me, a sudden determination in her face that makes me shrink back. “Make him believe it’s his,” she snaps vehemently. “Our family needs this, Amalie. And if he thinks you’re carrying his heir, it won’t matter if he believes he was your first or not. As long as he can feel certain the baby is his.” She pauses, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind. “Don’t tell him until it’s absolutely necessary,” she says finally. “Not until after the wedding. It’s been what, a month?”
I nod, swallowing hard. “I took the test this morning.”
She presses her lips together. “And you’ve been sick for a week. I should’ve realized—well, I didn’t think I’d raised such a little whore.” She says it almost flatly this time, like a fact that she’s starting to come to terms with. “You can go a little while still without seeing a doctor. Long enough for the wedding to take place. You can tell him afterward, and he’ll want to believe it’s his.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I challenge it anyway out of sheer desperation, even though I know I’m playing a fool’s game—the baby is David’s, and no amount of pretending that there’s some chance it isn’t will change that. “If he doesn’t want to justbelieveit? If he demands proof? A paternity test?”
“Then we’ll deal with that problem if it comes up. We can make this marriage more difficult for him to get out of than to get into.” My mother paces a little ways down the hall and back, clearly plotting now. “We can make it worth his while to look past it, perhaps—”
My stomach sinks, a knot of despair like ice filling it. Even if he demands proof, he won’t want out of the marriage once he knows it’s his baby. The only way to get out of this is to keep the marriage from happening at all—and I can feel those walls closing in. There’s no escape that I can see.
“Youwillkeep absolutely quiet about this,” my mother hisses, rounding on me once more. “I will make you regret it if you breathe a single word, Amalie Leone. Do you understand me?”
I do. I understand her completely, and I can hear the death knell of my freedom as I look at my mother’s sharp blue eyes.
“Yes,” I whisper softly. “I understand.”
“Good.” She straightens, a little of her calm returning. “I’ve arranged for us to go to the church and finish the betrothal contract. We’ll go and fetch your husband-to-be.”
She motions for me to follow her, and I do, feeling numb. David is standing by the unlit fireplace, looking out of the window as if lost in thought, and he turns when he hears us walk in. I’m struck all over again by how handsome he is—but it’s a different sort of handsomeness here. In Ibiza, there was an indolence to him, a rakish attractiveness that came from the way he carried himself, as if he was a little above everyone else around him, a little better than all of the trust fund babies and billionaires’ children flooding the resorts and clubs.
Here, he simply fits in. In his bespoke suit, his face clean-shaven and his expression calm, he looks entirely at home among the antiques, vintage furniture, and expensive textiles in the informal living room. He belongs in this sort of place—old money, not new—and looking at him now, I’m not sure how I missed it before. I’ve grown up around men like David—like my father and brother and all of their colleagues and friends—my whole life. I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner—except, perhaps, because I simply didn’t want to.
“The driver will be around with the car any minute,” my mother says crisply, ignoring me and speaking directly to David. “We can go to the church and finalize the contract.”
He pauses, looking between the two of us. “There’s one thing I need to do,” he says finally. “I’ll take my own driver, and return in a few hours. We can go then.”
My mother looks as if she might have an aneurysm. I’m not sure anyone other than my father has ever told her to wait on their pleasure, instead of immediately jumping to obey her itinerary. “The priest—”
“Can wait,” David says curtly. “I’ll ride to the church with you, if that’s what you prefer. But I’ll need a few hours before then.”
I’m banished back to my room while we wait on David. I pass the time pacing back and forth, trying to think of an out, trying to think of an escape—but there is none. There’s nothing I can do, and I know it.
The three hours pass all too quickly before David returns, without a word about where he’s been. He doesn’t say anything to me on the ride to the cathedral. Not a word. He sits on the other side of the car, leaning back as he scrolls casually through his phone, and my cheeks burn as I think about that last afternoon in Ibiza. It’s hard to believe that the cold, composed man sitting across from me is the same one who fucked me up against a glass window, the same one who whispered such filthy things to me as I came on his fingers, his tongue, his—
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, trying to banish the thoughts. My mother is sitting stiffly next to me, and I fold my hands into my lap, trying to calm my racing heart. It feels unthinkable that in just a short time, I’m going to be engaged to David—to a man that I thought I’d never see again.
