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“You didn’t think my father sold insurance for a living, did you?”
Now that she’s put it that way, it seems obvious. Of course he’s a mobster. He fits the archetype perfectly—scary, controlling, demanding, archaic as hell. I still take a few moments to process that.
“Okay, so let me get this straight: this isn’t really about you and Dmitri wanting to have a child. This is about the two of you needing to have a child?”
She grabs a throw and hugs it to her chest. “Kinda.”
My heartbeat is rising rapidly. “Except for one problem: you’re faking a pregnancy. And the only baby that really exists…” I put my hands on my stomach. “… is this one.”
“I wouldn’t call that a problem, per se?—”
“Bee!” She jumps when I yelp her name. “Are you trying to pass off my baby as yours?”
She’s chewing hard on her bottom lip. When I do that, I look like a rabid hamster, but when she does, she looks like a Hollywood starlet. “Only to my father and his people,” she assures me quickly.
There are so many holes in this plan that my head spins. “I don’t get it. Why can’t you just tell him that you can’t have children? My sister had fertility issues, too. It’s not uncommon and it’s also not anything you need to be ashamed of.”
“If only it were that easy,” she whispers in a mournful, broken voice. “If only that would work.”
It’s taking a lot of effort not to devolve into full-on panic mode here. It’s one thing to be forced into this weird little love triangle, albeit minus the love. But it’s a whole other thing to know that we’re actively deceiving a man who clearly wields a lot of power of the morbid and quasi-illegal variety.
“It should be that easy! It should work! Just say your body isn’t cooperating with you. That’s out of your control.”
She shakes her head. “My dad’s not the kind of man who just accepts that things are out of his control. He’s made it clear what he expects of me. Marry well. Make heirs. Continue his legacy. That’s the bottom line.”
“And if you can’t deliver?”
She looks undecided for a moment, caught between thoughts. Then she sighs deeply, and the next thing I know, she’s stripping off the thin white tank top she’s wearing. I get a glimpse of her tiny breasts and her unfairly toned stomach before she spins around.
And when she does, the gasp that escapes my lips is visceral and horrified.
“Oh my God, Bee…”
Her back is riddled with deep scars that slash from left to right, from right to left, up and down and down and up. I can count at least a few dozen at a glance, but there are so many more, each melting into the next. Thick, deep, pink, barbed-wire-like scars pleated over one another like cross-stitching.
She tugs her tank top back on and turns to me. “He had a name for the whip he used on me. He called it ‘Absolution.’”
My upper arms are covered with goosebumps and I feel physically sick. All the gummy worms I consumed during the movie are roiling uncomfortably in my stomach. “H-he whipped you?”
“There isn’t an option of not delivering, Wren,” she explains gently, as though I’m the one who needs comforting. “That’s the result of saying no to Vittorio Zanetti.”
I swallow back the bile rising to my throat. “He’s not an asshole,” I hiss passionately. “He’s a monster.”
She nods. “I don’t disagree. But even the worst monsters can be slain. It just takes time and patience. And until then, we play the game.”
Her eyes brighten with determination but I’m still feeling pure panic. I’m in way over my head here; that much is super obvious. “Bee, you have no idea how much I feel for you… but?—”
“You’re scared for your child.”
I nod, feeling like a bitch for turning the conversation around to my problems after what she just showed me. “I’m sorry?—”
“Don’t be sorry,” she insists. “It’s natural. And honestly? I think you’re gonna be a much better mother than I could ever be. That’s why I want you here: so that you can be the mother this child needs. I don’t plan on taking your place, Wren.”
“Except publicly.”
She winces. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”
I keep seeing those horrible scars, those inhuman lashes. It makes my own skin crawl in sympathy pain.
