Chapter 34
I sigh. “I’m fat.”
Behind me, Aldo chuckles at my random declaration. “You’re not fat, Amore, you’re pregnant.”
Through the mirror, I look at him. He’s staring down at his phone, typing away, barely acknowledging me. He’s been like that all morning. Distracted by whatever he’s looking at or whoever he’s messaging.
Unamused, I turn and face him, holding my arms outwards. “Say that to my pants.”
As proof, I try to button my jeans again. I look at him when the button stops short of my rounded belly.
I feel defeated. This is horrible.
Sure, I knew eventually my pants wouldn’t fit, or I would have to get bigger clothes, but this feels too soon. I’ve seen my friends’ mothers who have been pregnant, and they didn’t show so soon. My friend Makayla’s mom didn’t start showing in her pregnancy until she was six months.
I’m barely three months, and even my softball coach said that I look like I’ve put on weight.
From across the room, Aldo pockets his phone, pushing off the wall, and walks towards me. I stay quiet as he pulls me into his chest, and his left arm wraps around my waist until I’m pressed against him. His finger crooks under my chin to lift my gaze to his. “Amore, I will buy you all the pants that you want. Remember you’re with me. You don’t need anything.”
I do remember. And when I don’t, he loves to remind me.
“Well, that will work another time, but for now, I have to get ready and have nothing to wear to school.”
Aldo frowns, but it quickly turns into a fake pout. “I thought you were going to stay home with me today and play hooky.”
He lowers his head to my neck, gently kissing the soft spot that always makes me want to melt into him. Consumed by his presence and actions, my eyes close, and I exhale. I love him, but I need a break from him after spending the entire weekend crammed up in his penthouse. Plus, I’ve been away from Gaia too long. She dropped her phone and broke it, so my father told her she would have to wait to get another one.
“That’s what I said, but-“
“But what?”
Aldo moves to my ear, taking my lobe between his teeth and gently biting it. “Stay here. Stay with me, Amore.”
His kisses pepper along my jaw. “We can lay in bed all day, watch TV, eat snacks, and feed my big baby.”
I chuckle. “How do you know the baby is big?”
“Because,”
Aldo’s hand lowers from my hip to my front and rubs my rounding belly. “I’m a big guy.”
My eyes roll, and I laugh. “You’re not even that big.”
Aldo scoffs, pulling back to look at me. “That’s not what you said last night.”
“Gross.”
We both laugh, and I push him away. “Are you sure you’re as old as you say?”
He shrugs in response to my joking question. I grab Aldo’s t-shirt off the counter as I turn to the mirror again. It’s the only thing that’s big enough to hide my stomach. The last thing I want before I got to school is for my parents to find out what I’m hiding and start an argument.
It would be even weirder to explain who I’m pregnant by when my parents think I’m dating Mickey Stephens from around the corner. Mickey, who has no interest in girls, uses me for the same cover that I use him.
To keep people from knowing who we’re really with. It’s the perfect cover-up for two teens doing things they’re not supposed to do.
“So, will you stay?”
I frown. Pulling my hair up into a bun on top of my head, I force it into a ponytail holder. “I can’t. I have to get Gaia to school. My dad goes to work early, and I’m sure my mom stayed with Tommy.”
I emphasize my distaste for the nickname Tommy.
Behind me, Aldo chuckles, too aware of how much I hate his older brother. “Well, we can take Gaia to school, then be with each other. We’ll pick her up and get dinner when she gets off.”
The idea sounds great, but I’m not sure. “How about you just drop us off and pick us up?”
Aldo grunts impatiently, and I can sense his irritation. “Fine.”
Finished getting ready, I look at him. “You’re acting like I didn’t just stay with you the last couple of days, and I’m not going to see you tonight.”
“I missed you, is all. We had a plan, and now you’re changing it.”
Aldo curses. “Forgive me for wanting to spend time with you.”
“Way to gaslight me, bro.”
I chuckle more to myself and to cover my disbelief at how he’s acting.
“Gaslight? Amore, you promised me something and are backing out. I’m allowed to be disappointed.”
“And I’m allowed to go to school.”
Angry, I brush past Aldo into his bedroom. “Plus, I’m not the only one going back on my word, huh?”
I grab my sneakers from the floor and sit on the end of his bed.
Confused, Aldo turns off the bathroom light and comes closer. “I went back on my word? When?”
I roll my eyes, tired and frustrated. “Where were you, Aldo, huh? The last time you went out of town, you were visiting your fiancée I didn’t know about. Then you leave suddenly again for two weeks and come back demanding that I spend time with you and miss out on my friends and school. I have a life, too.”
“I’m not demanding i-“
Cutting him off, I stand and grab my backpack. “Where were you?”
Light brown eyes meet mine, and I see that he’s not going to tell me without him saying anything. “You’re a lying piece of shit, Aldo.”
I push past him out of his room. “Why don’t you demand that your fiancée spend time with you?”
His footsteps sound behind me, but they don’t seem angry. They’re rushed. “Echo, Amore, that’s not it. To break the engagement, I have things that I have to do. They won’t let me go back on a promise that easily.”
“Bullshit!”
I yell over my shoulder. “If you wanted to do something, you would just do it.”
My hand reaches for the knob of the front door, but I’m stopped. Aldo pulls me back, and I jerk out of his grasp. He raises his hands in surrender. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like then? Huh?”
I feel myself grow hot and try to push down my emotions. “What are you hiding from me?”
Aldo runs his hands through his long hair, cursing again. “I’m an enforcer.”
My thoughts sputter, my brain unable to get ahead of whatever lie he will tell me. “Okay, and?”
My question seems to relax Aldo. He reaches out, taking my hand, and the calming sensation unnerves me. It doesn’t matter how angry I am with him. The instant he touches me, I lose common sense.
“To get out of this engagement, there are things that I have to do. I don’t like them, and they’re not good, but I’m doing them.”
He smiles reassuringly. “I’m doing them so we can be together.”
I still don’t believe him, and Aldo can see that. He steps closer to me. “I love you, Echo. You and the baby are everything to me.”
I’m torn.
My body wants to give in, to hug him, to love him, and to spend the day with him as we had planned. My heart is crushed. It knows he’s lying and manipulative and can persuade me to do almost anything for him. My head is angry at him still for even putting me in this emotionally vulnerable state.
Decided, I step away from him and go to the door. My hand stops on the knob, and I look at a wounded Aldo over my shoulder. “Prove it, Aldo. If you really love us, prove it.”
****
“Things you should know about yourself.”
I adjust the pillows behind me, ensuring I’m comfortably reclined in bed before I continue reading from the article on my phone. “At twelve weeks, Baby B, you should no longer look like a duck. Though it sounds painful, it isn’t, and your fingernails and toenails are starting to form. You’ll just have to wait until you get out to see if you have my nice, creative hands or your father’s monstrous fingers.”
I sigh, hoping that this is working and I’m not just losing my fucking mind. For the life of me, I can’t remember what forum I was randomly scrolling through while looking for ways to bond with an unborn fetus that said to read to the baby. I’ll probably never remember because, in all honesty, the forum was a crock of fuckery and dumb shit. Moms asking questions about feeling babies move so early, shitting on each other about eating a hotdog at three in the morning, or crying over a tub of ice cream after watching a commercial.
It felt stupid to read what they had to say.
Even when I was pregnant the first time, I had nothing in common with regular teens who were pregnant. None of them were pregnant by a man twice their age who was a killer, the brother of the man their mother was having an affair with, and affiliated with the mafia.
This time, it’s the same but in a different way.
Reading the comments of moms bashing each other for the simplest of things was distracting and made me want to find them to end their miserable, unhappy, holier-than-thou lives. It made me realize that there’s no bigger bitch than a pregnant woman that thinks she knows it all.
So, left with nothing to read, my weekly update is all I have. The books I’ve been devouring are starting to get too gory to read out loud to a fetus.
Like this baby isn’t already insane just by being your baby.
Plus, I’m sure if Damiano finds me reading horror books, he’ll literally never let me out of his sight. Not that I’ve minded him being around for whatever reason. He’s still working, which allows us space to get a break from each other. He’s also handling business as usual, or whatever business he typically has with Carmine and the other men, but he checks in with me throughout the day.
Dare I think that it’s…. What? Cute? Adorable?
My chest heats up at that thought, and I swallow down the bile that’s trying to ruin my night.
Yeah, we wouldn’t dare say that at all.
I force myself to return to the task at hand. Updating my fetus on what it has accomplished inside me while I fight to keep down everything daily.
I inhale deeply, exhausted already. “You apparently are only about three inches, and your head accounts for most of that.”
My eyes naturally shoot down to my stomach. “So, that proves you’re Bianchi.”
“What proves your Bianchi?”
I’m not startled by Damiano’s voice. He’s learning to be stealthier by the day. Like he hopes he’ll come across me doing something suspicious. And he might, but it won’t be what he expects.
I mask my feelings, much like I’ve been doing over the last few days, to force myself to be happy. I outstretch my phone in his direction, and he moves forward. When he takes the phone from my hands, I watch the frown that mars his handsome expression as he squints to read the words on it.
He’s got a migraine.
Although I want to ask him if he’s taken anything, I know he'll say he’s okay. He’s so accustomed to taking care of everybody else that he won’t allow himself to relinquish his care to me.
Yet, at the same time, I don’t blame him.
There’s a deeper, darker side to me that sometimes wants him out of the way so I can run ragged again. If my emotions weren’t blocking my way, I would have probably found a way to kill him by now.
“You’re twelve weeks?”
I lift my head and look at him. From how I’m reclining on the bed, it’s hard to see anything other than his nostrils and full lips. “Closer to thirteen weeks, but whatevs. I was telling Baby B about itself.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up, and Damiano nods, hiding his expression quickly. He doesn’t wait for me to invite him; he makes himself comfortable. Confident, he sits down across from me against the pillows and passes the phone back to me.
“Continue,”
he prods. “I’d like to know why we are concerned about Baby B’s head looking like his father’s.”
I scoff. “His?”
Damiano rolls his eyes. “Old habits die hard.”
I could argue with him and distract me from what I’m doing, but since I told myself that this might help me grow attached to the baby, I want to see if it will.
I find where I left off. “You are growing nails- fingers and toes. Eventually, it will aid you in clawing your way out of me.”
The bed shifts as Damiano scoots to lean back on the pillows next to me. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his eyes on me.
“And though we can’t tell if you’re a boy or girl, those parts are developing. So, soon we will know.”
How do you end a story? “The end.”
I turn to look at Damiano. A smile isn’t on his face, but there’s a light in his eyes that shows amusement and a bit of enjoyment. “The end?”
“Yep.”
I nod. “Would you have done it differently?”
My words come out softer than I expect, but in a good way.
Next to me, Damiano rolls onto his right side to face me, and I do the same on my left side, cupping my face beneath my hand. Gentle, he reaches out and pushes my hair out of my face. “Well, I wouldn’t have mentioned the head thing. Baby B can’t have a complex before it’s born, no matter how true it may be.”
He frowns to prove his point in a joking way. “That’s beside the point, though. Maybe next week you can say, talk to you soon or to be continued.”
I soak in the domesticity of the moment that we’re sharing.
Despite what I tell myself, I crave things like this. When dealing with the outside world, I sometimes want to demolish everyone I come into contact with, and I wouldn’t hesitate to do so. When I’m with Damiano, like now, that’s the only thing I want. It’s the only thing that I’m concerned about. I want to be the center of his attention, even though I’m fully aware that it won’t last and that once the baby arrives, things will shift between us again.
I’m preparing myself for that and ready to make it work no matter what.
“To be continued?”
I muse over the words in my mind. “I like that.”
Across from me, Damiano smirks. “I figured that you would.”
He falls quiet, and I sense that he wants to tell me something, but he's hesitant. It’s most likely why he’s up here with me so early in the evening versus finishing up with whatever business he has to do. Viviana hasn’t finished dinner yet, but with pregnancy making me too tired to sit around the house anymore, I came up to our room.
The plan was to nap until baby forums took over.
Now, I hate all other mothers.
“Are we going to make this our Thursday routine?”
After my question, I scoot closer to Damiano on the bed until we are less than an arm's length from each other. I resist the urge to move further into his space, pushing away the want to be as impressed on him as the men’s shirt he’s wearing that fits him too nicely. Less than ten hours ago, I woke up with his arms wrapped around me while we both slept, and I’m craving that same unwavering touch at the moment.
“Do you want it to be?”
My eyes, which were unabashedly perusing Damiano’s body, return to looking at him directly. An intense need builds inside me that I know is from not being able to have him. “I want you.”
He groans, his eyes closing for a brief moment. “Soon, Bellissima.”
Relenting, I nod. This is difficult for both of us that much is obvious, but it's necessary. He’s not going to do anything that will risk the baby’s life, and I am not willing to live with the guilt that I’m the cause of something happening because I couldn’t control my primal instincts.
The premise of this agreement was based solely on one thing.
Protection.
In exchange, I gave myself up without hesitation. The back and forth that we have endured seems to be at an end or a stalemate, and it’s making me wish that we’d reached this point sooner. That we hadn’t wasted so much time at opposites.
You’ll always be at opposites.
I ignore my thoughts and look at my husband to see that he’s staring at me again. A nervous smile blooms on my face that ends with a slight chuckle. “What?”
Damiano shakes his head, half of his movement hidden in the pillow that he’s lying against, but his eyes never leave mine. “I know you said before you were going to school for bioengineering after your family’s murders, but before that, did you want to do something else?”
For a long time, I think about it. I know I wanted to do something. It had always been something I could rely on to take care of Gaia if I needed to, which I know that I would have. My endgame had always been Gaia.
“A pilot,”
I remember from a conversation that I had with my father. “Men make up almost ninety-five percent of pilots, and I wanted to be a percentage of women who made the remaining.”
Damiano smiles. “You would have done it.”
I chuckle. “That or the military – I wanted to go into the Air Force.”
The laughter that fills the room is surprising for a second. When he stops laughing, Damiano shakes his head. “Bellissima, you have to be able to listen to authority in any military. I can’t imagine you doing that now. Maybe ten years ago.”
His words settle, and I chuckle. He’s got a very valid point. Life for me has taken so many turns in the last ten years that the person I am today would undoubtedly kill my commanding office. Ten years ago, Echo would have listened and done anything to provide for Gaia.
“You might be surprised, but I used to be an excellent listener.”
My flirtatious words don’t miss Damiano.
Across from me, my husband smirks. “I don’t doubt that, but I’ve grown accustomed to your non-listening ways.”
Now I know he’s playing around. There’s no way in hell any Don wants a woman that doesn’t listen, let alone talks back, and speaks their mind. They honestly prefer wives that don’t have a mind. I recall Aldo once telling me that women in the Mafia are raised differently from men. A mafia princess is typically supposed to be seen and not heard. She’s merely there to be a trophy wife and to bring heirs. He’d claimed that since he was a second son, though, that responsibility didn’t fall on him.
I know that he was supposedly engaged at one point, but I had never bothered to look into his life to find out why he hadn’t gone through with the wedding after my family’s murder. I wonder if that woman had been the perfect mafia princess, and that was why he didn’t marry her.
The feeling of something caressing my cheek brings me out of my thoughts, and I look back at Damiano. His light brown eyes roam over my face, watching me. “Where did you go?”
I shrug at his question. “Into my brain.”
The back of his hand gently rubs along my cheek to my jawline, where he lowers it to my neck. “Is it safe there?”
His hand soothingly rests over my collarbone. Not tightening around it, but simply applying enough pressure to keep my attention.
“Not really. I could say that it’s my worst enemy. It makes me feel like I’m crazy.”
Vulnerable, naive, and stupid, too.
A smile ghosts across Damiano’s lips for a brief second. Quickly, he leans in from his position, and his lips touch mine before he pulls back. “Hardly any person that sets change on a path is sane.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me. I doubt that I will ever have a safe space in my brain. Often, I think something, and the other parts of my brain will battle with me. In the last few months, they have quieted some. They aren’t as intrusive and hostile as they used to be.
“I wish I was.”
I hesitate for a moment. “I just want mental peace for once.”
He nods. “How can I help? Let me help you.”
I don’t know that he can, but the fact that he’s requesting help moves me more than I want to admit. It has taken time and some outbursts, but he seems to be accepting the feelings we have beneath this marriage of convenience. I understand the hesitation behind it. We’ve both been in situations where our emotions have weakened us or in situations where they were used against us. As the Don, any vulnerability that he exposes puts the family at risk.
Again, I’m brought out of my thoughts by his soft caress. I sigh. “Find a way for me to be able to exercise and run?”
Damiano chuckles. “You can’t do that right now.”
He grows quiet, thinking. “How do you feel about meditation?”
Ew, gross. I frown. “Like I want to run away from my intrusive thoughts and memories, not meditate on them.”
This time, he laughs. The sound that I rarely hear fills me with gaiety, and I don’t hold the smile that wants to show itself. “It’s not as bad as you make it seem, Bellissima.”
I roll my eyes. “I doubt that, but I’m listening. Convince me.”
“Gio meditates.”
Damiano shrugs. “He’s the calmest person I know despite this life.”
Considering it, I reflect on Gio and realize that I have never seen him angry or raise his voice for anything. He’s always laughing or smiling, and even though he’s older than Damiano, he has a youthful air about him.
“Will you do it with me?”
Damiano nods. “Yes. If you want, I will try it with you.”
I want to ask him if he’s saying it to deter me from pestering him, but the expression on his face reveals that he intends to try it. “Can I ask you something and not sound ungrateful?”
Seeking his reassurance, Damiano gives me another peck with quick contact. “Depends on what you say, but I will try not to see it as ungratefulness.”
That’s all I can pray for. “Why are you here, Damiano?”
I meet my husband’s eyes. “You have been here for the past few weeks, seeing that I’m taken care of when you know I am, visiting me throughout the day when you would normally be at work, and being considerate of things I might need. I know we said that this is a lifetime commitment, but I just figured that once I was pregnant, you would want nothing to do with me. That you would continue to ignore me.”
The relaxed air that surrounds us seems to disappear, and Damiano’s grounding touch on me lifts when he lowers his hand. He takes what feels like forever to think, then sighs. “I know that’s what you expected of me, Bellissima, and it’s my fault for never correcting that notion. I think for the longest time, I tried to convince myself that this hold you have on me is because of how you get under my skin. I wasn’t raised with emotions that weren’t rage, hatred, and tolerance. Not until my uncle and aunt stepped in to take me in after my father put me in the hospital at fifteen– “ I must express something on my face because he takes my hand easily. “Another story for another time.”
“I’m not going to let it go,” I say.
Damiano scoffs lightly. “I don’t expect you to.”
He kisses my knuckles. “With my aunt and uncle, I learned that I wasn’t attracted to the idea of being married to someone with mafia ties, but The Council, blah, blah, blah. Then you come into my bar, coincidence or not, we’re here now, and I couldn’t get you out of my head. And when you talked to me, though I hadn’t spoken the words to myself, I knew that I wasn’t letting you go. Your history and the fact that we discovered Aldo was looking for you just helped solidify that. I guess I just expected this to be different despite knowing it wouldn’t be.”
“What do you mean?”
Our fingers thread on their own, and my thumb runs along the length of his out of habit.
“I assumed that you would need me to save you, that you would be this desperate creature running to me for everything. But you aren’t, Echo.”
The use of my name indicates the severity of his admission. “You are a formidable force with too many secrets– Secrets that I need to know because I know that they are going to destroy me later, but I am willing to give you space and time to tell me.”
He doesn’t mention that he still has men looking into me, and I don’t remind him. “I won’t be who Maximo Bianchi raised me to be while I’m with you. I can’t give you the undying love that my uncle gave my aunt, though I know we can get there eventually, but I can give you my vow to always work on giving you me or what you need from me.”
I resist the urge to move, straddle him, and take all his unspoken promises. Not that I could right now, anyway. His words aren’t anywhere close to him spewing his love to me, but I don’t want that right now. I wouldn’t believe it if a man like Damiano told me that he loved me. And this feels so much better than anything any person I have ever been with has declared to me.
Uncertain of what to say in response, I kiss him this time. Our lips meet softly, our breaths tangling as we press against each other. I pull back, and our eyes meet. “Thank you.”
He smiles. “We said forever.”