Chapter 19
DANTE
It’s almost comical to see my wife’s burly bodyguards sipping fast food milkshakes out of palm tree-printed paper cups with their sunglasses on.
As I pull into the doctor’s office parking lot, I can see one of them leaning against the hood of the Escalade, and another posted at the front door of the clinic pretending to talk to someone on his phone.
They’re not exactly subtle, but that’s fine.
I don’t want them to be. I want anyone who might be watching to know that my wife is protected.
Inside the waiting room, I spot Donovan’s hulking form next to Frankie, a battered paperback held up to his face.
His eyes dart to me as I walk in, then go back to his pulp novel.
My wife doesn’t acknowledge my presence when I sit beside her, though Donovan moves a few chairs away to give us a little privacy.
“Did you enjoy your burger?” I ask quietly.
“I enjoyed three.” She picks up her own palm tree cup and slurps pink strawberry shake through the straw. “And I only puked up the first two.”
She returns to the magazine spread open across her thighs, ignoring me again.
The waiting room is small and there’s only one other couple here.
The husband eyes Donovan and moves a little closer to his very pregnant wife, who is scrolling on her phone.
I wonder if he’s nervous because of my bodyguard, or because of the impending birth of his child.
And the myriad things that could go wrong. My gut knots and I shift in my seat.
The walls are covered in framed posters illustrating the various stages of pregnancy.
Another depicts a woman discreetly breastfeeding.
There’s a series of black and white photographs of a woman giving birth, her bottom half covered with a drape.
Can’t get too graphic, I guess, or every man who set foot in here would bolt.
After an eternity of sitting in silence, a nurse with a clipboard comes out and says, “Francesca? You can come back now.”
Frankie stands, and I do too, but she shoos me back to my seat.
“Sit down. I don’t want you going back there.”
“I thought—”
“Just wait here with Donovan,” she says, gliding away.
I drop back down in the chair, a little stung that she doesn’t want me in there, but also a little relieved I won’t be going back to see all the instruments and needles and…things. I glance back over at Donovan. Still reading. I should have brought a book, too.
The minutes tick by while I look around the room. Up at the ceiling. Make awkward eye contact with the other man across the waiting room. Why is this taking so long?
What if something is wrong?
Frankie told me to be here, and I was. Hell, I was early. I should be back there with her. I should be doing…something. Shouldn’t I? It’s my kid, too, for fuck’s sake.
The longer I sit, the more pissed off I get. Restless, I finally stand up—planning to march myself to the exam room and demand to hold a chart or something—but before I take two steps, the same nurse who took Frankie away opens the door and pops her head into the waiting area.
“Mr. Bellanti?”
“Yes?”
“The preliminary exam is done, so you can come on back. Right this way.”
Relieved, I follow her into the hall.
“How’d it all turn out?” I ask anxiously. “Is it all…normal?”
She just smiles. “Dr. Shirvani will have details for you, and she can answer any questions you have. But since your wife’s blood draw is finished, it’s time for the sonogram.”
Sonogram? My heart jumps in my chest. I’m suddenly more excited than I ever thought possible. I’m about to see my kid for the first time.
We enter the room to find Frankie lying on a padded table, her belly exposed.
There’s a slight bump there that I’ve noticed, but she’s been wearing fall layers that keep it hidden—so this is the first full-on, daylight look I’m getting at it.
I can’t help staring at it, fascinated. There’s a baby in there.
Our baby. Growing bigger and stronger every single day.
Frankie reaches out her hand, looking slightly scared. I go to her side immediately.
“I’m still mad at you,” she whispers. “But I didn’t want you to miss this.”
Dr. Shirvani comes in just then, all smiles as she greets me, shakes my hand, and then quickly gets down to business. Once there’s a thick layer of gel on Frankie’s abdomen, the doctor puts the wand just below her belly button and starts slowly moving it around.
“Look!” Frankie points to the screen.
And…oh my God. “I see a head. And hands.”
“Yes. And right there, those are the feet,” the doctor says. “You can also see the heartbeat, but it won’t be audible for another few weeks.”
Frankie’s hand is tight on mine. I stare at the screen in awe, as if I’m taking in a star-studded night sky full of unknowable galaxies. My vision blurs, making me blink a few times.
“Would you like to know the sex?” The doctor looks between us. “Technically, it’s just an anatomical determination.”
I panic, looking to my wife for help. She looks a little panicky, too.
“Damn that stone face of yours,” she says. “Do you want to know or not?”
I’m not prepared to make this call, but I reflexively shake my head no.
Frankie smiles. “Okay. Me neither. But Dr. Shirvani, can you tell me what your thoughts are on horseback riding while pregnant?”
“In the first trimester, it’s generally fine, as long as it’s not vigorous and you’re experienced. Moderate exercise is good for you and the baby.”
“Ha!” Frankie says.
“But,” Shirvani goes on, “there’s definitely more risk on a horse than, say, riding a bike. Or going running. And since you are going into your second trimester, I’d weigh the risks seriously before continuing to ride. I wouldn’t recommend it at all in your third.”
I stop myself from blurting “ha” right back at my wife. But ooh, do I want to.
Dr. Shirvani looks at the monitor again, eyes scanning the screen.
“Everything’s okay, right?” Frankie asks, sounding worried. “I didn’t…hurt it, did I?”
“All good,” the doctor says with a smile, turning back to us. “I was just checking all the boxes. Looking good. Here, I’ll print a few photos for you to take. I love these new machines.”
A row of somewhat blurry black and white images of the sonogram roll out, and the doctor rips them off and hands them to me. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
Frankie lets out a deep sigh of relief as the doctor finishes with the scan and wipes the gel from Frankie’s belly. She’s still clinging to my hand. I gently let go of her and carefully tear one of the images off the strip, then hand the rest to her as I slide the picture into my breast pocket.
In the car on the way home, with Donovan driving and the security team following in my car, Frankie takes my hand again and turns to me.
“Okay. So maybe trail riding is a little too much for the future…” she admits. “But honestly, that ride fixed my back pain like nothing else has.”
I frown. “I didn’t realize you were in pain. I’m sorry. I could’ve—”
“It’s not that bad. I think it’s just like, all my organs shifting around. I get this dull ache sometimes, shooting down my leg, like a nerve is twisted or pinched or something.”
“Sciatica,” I tell her. “Sounds like it.”
“Well whatever it is, it disappeared after I got on Ytse. Something about the way the saddle moves my hips around, I don’t know. But it made the ache go away.”
I start thinking of all the things we could try. “I’ll bring in a masseuse, an acupuncturist. Whatever you need to be pain free.”
Frankie laughs. “Oh, there’s going to be pain, Dante. Pain and swelling and cravings and all kinds of uncomfortable things. If there’s one thing I learned from Charlie, it’s that being pregnant is extremely gross sometimes.”
“I didn’t know Charlie and Clayton had a baby.”
Her smile drops and she looks away, out the window. “They, um…didn’t. She’s had two miscarriages. And until today, I didn’t even think about that happening to me. But now it’s all I can think about.”
I pull her against me, smoothing her hair back as she rests her head on my shoulder.
“I was born two months premature,” she says quietly. “Growing up, whenever my dad got mad at me for doing something stupid, he’d say it was because I didn’t cook long enough.”
“Frankie—”
“I know it’s not true, he’s just an asshole…but what if something bad happens? What if I do the wrong thing, or not enough of the right things, or the baby—”
I cut her off with a kiss. “We’ll buy every baby book we can get our hands on.”
“How about just the good ones?” she says with a laugh.
“The best ones. I promise,” I tell her seriously. “And when we get home, I’ll give you a massage. I’m sure I can find a way to make you forget all those aches and pains.”
“I’ll take that bet,” she purrs.
A lump forms in my throat and I hold her more tightly. “I swear to you, Francesca. You will be safe. You are protected, both of you, and this baby is going to be perfect just like you.”
“More perfect, I hope.”
“That’s not possible.”
Frankie smacks me with a playful hand, her smile widening even further. “Look at you, flirting shamelessly with me. Sir, you have already put a ring on it and knocked me up. I’m not going anywhere.”
I kiss her forehead and can’t stop myself from reminding her, “You left once before.”
Shit. I sound like an asshole. And I definitely didn’t mean to sound so emotional about it, either. Frankie just stares at me, her hand loosening in mine.
“I didn’t leave you, Dante. You drove me away. There’s a difference between being safe and protected, and being in a cage. Being controlled. Being kept in the dark.”
Her hand leaves mine completely as she looks out the window. I don’t have a good rebuttal, but I steel myself to ask the one question that’s been bothering me most since I collected her in Miami.
“Would you have come back if you weren’t pregnant?”
Silence pulses between us.
Still refusing to meet my gaze, she says, “I’m here now, and this kid is on the way.”
“But—Frankie, I love you.”
She smiles sadly. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”
“What more is there?”
Finally, she looks over at me again. “There’s trust. Communication.
Choice. A whole host of things. Compromising from time to time, even.
But the biggest thing is trust. You don’t trust me.
Yet you’ve set this marriage up so that I have no choice but to trust you.
How is that fair? How is that ever going to be… livable for me?”
I don’t know what to say as her words tumble in my mind. She’s right. But if I tell her the truth, tell her everything, it will change the way she sees me, feels about me. Irrevocably.
“I’ve seen the posters around town,” she adds. “Of Bregman. I know he’s missing. And I know that…that I’m the reason why he’s probably dead.”
My jaw goes tight. “He signed his death notice the moment he fucked with my father’s car.”
And I won’t apologize for that, even if it makes me sick to think about what happened to him for doing it.
“So he is dead, then,” Frankie murmurs.
Contemplating, I look at her, hesitating as I try to decide what to say—something, anything besides the truth. But she wants the truth, and my trust. I really have no choice.
“…yes,” I answer.
Her face goes blank and then she turns back to the window, shrouded in silence. I watch her, wondering what she’s thinking as we make the turn into the drive of Bellanti Vineyards.
And I make up my mind.