Chapter 10
Birdie
“I hate you,” I mutter as I sit buckled into the seat on Lorenzo’s jet.
He doesn’t answer.
That only makes the rage inside me climb higher.
The cabin is quiet in that expensive, controlled way that makes what just happened feel even more unreal. My bouquet is gone. My veil is torn. But I’m still in the wedding dress he ripped me out of the church in, the ivory silk spread around me like a mockery.
And beneath it, hidden by the careful cut of the bodice and the fall of the skirt, is the secret he still doesn’t know.
My stomach tightens.
But how long will I be able to keep this baby a secret?
I turn my head and glare at him. “Did you hear me?”
Lorenzo sits across from me, one hand loose on the armrest, the other still marked faintly with powder from the gun he brought into a church. He looks maddeningly calm for a man who just destroyed my wedding.
“Yes.”
The single word lands like a slap.
I laugh, sharp and shaking. “That’s all you have to say?”
His gaze drags over me, unreadable. “What would you like me to say, Elizabeth?”
My mouth falls open.
“Are you serious?” I lean forward against the seat belt cutting across my lap. “You stormed into a church with armed men. You threatened Teresa. You dragged me off in front of everyone. You humiliated Dante. You humiliated me. And now you want to know what I’d like you to say?”
His jaw tics once, but that’s the only sign I’ve gotten under his skin.
“Start with you’re sorry.” Silence. Of course. I shake my head, fury making my eyes burn. “You know what? Don’t bother. I don’t want anything from you.”
“That’s a lie.”
The words are quiet but certain. It infuriates me.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I know you were about to marry him.”
“And whose fault is that?” I fire back. “You married someone else, Lorenzo.”
That one lands. I see it in the hard flicker of his eyes. In the way his fingers curl once against the armrest before flattening again.
Good.
“You don’t get to disappear into another life, play husband to another woman, and then act like I’m the one who betrayed you.” My voice breaks, but I keep going. “You lost the right to come after me the second you made vows to someone else.”
“That marriage means nothing.”
“It means everything,” I snap. “You said vows. You put your name on another woman. You don’t get to decide it means nothing just because you’ve suddenly changed your mind.”
The engines deepen beneath us, the plane beginning to taxi. The movement presses me back into the seat, but it doesn’t touch the fury burning through me.
Lorenzo watches me in silence for a long moment. “Did you love him?”
I stare at him. The audacity of the question almost steals my breath.
“What?”
“Did you love him,” he repeats, colder now, “or were you just going to let him put a ring on your finger and take my place because it was convenient?”
My laugh is ugly this time. “Your place?”
His eyes flash.
“You don’t have a place,” I hiss. “You gave it away.”
For the first time, something real shows on his face. Something dark enough to make the air in the cabin feel thinner.
The plane turns, the city lights streaking past the window.
I should shut up and conserve whatever strength I have left. But I can still see Teresa with a gun at her side. I can still hear the shot cracking through the church. I can still feel the way he ripped the ring off my finger like he had the right.
So I lean into the pain and make it uglier.
“Yes,” I say. “I was going to marry him.”
His expression goes completely still.
“He gave me a choice,” I whisper fiercely. “He gave me safety. Respect. Friendship. Things you have never once given me without taking something in return.”
The plane surges forward. The runway blurs. And for one suspended moment, Lorenzo says nothing at all. Then the jet lifts, and the ground drops away beneath us.
Only once we’re in the air does he speak.
“Go change.”
I blink. “What?”
He nods toward the garment bag lying on the seat beside him. I hadn’t noticed it before. “There are clothes in there.”
My fingers curl against the armrests. No. No, no, no. Because the dress is hiding me. Because the dress was chosen specifically to skim over my stomach and whatever is in that bag won’t have been picked with that in mind.
And because if I refuse—
My pulse spikes.
Lorenzo’s gaze drops to the gown. “I’m not looking at you in that dress for the rest of the flight.”
I force myself to sound angry instead of afraid. “Then don’t look at me.”
His mouth hardens. “Elizabeth.”
“No.” I lift my chin. “You’ve done enough for one day.”
He unbuckles his seat belt. Every muscle in my body locks. He stands slowly, the cabin seeming to shrink. He braces one hand on the back of the seat across from me and looks down at me with that same terrible composure he wore in the church.
“I told you to change.”
I stare back at him, heart battering against my ribs. “And I told you no.”
His gaze moves once over the bodice of the gown, over the lace sleeves, and the soft fall of silk hiding what I cannot let him see.
Something cold flickers in his eyes.
“You can walk into the bathroom and take it off yourself,” he says quietly, “or I’ll do it for you.”
Real fear slides through me then. Not because I think he’ll hurt me. Because if he comes near me with scissors or a knife or his hands tearing through the seams, he’ll see. And I have no idea what he’ll do with that truth trapped thirty thousand feet in the air.
My throat goes dry.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious.”
He takes one step closer. Instinctively, I flatten back against the seat. His eyes narrow and I know he notices that. Not just the anger now. The fear. It sharpens his focus in a way that terrifies me more than if he’d shouted.
“Why are you fighting so hard to keep it on?”
Because this child is the only thing in the world that is still mine.
I force a bitter laugh, praying it sounds convincing. “Maybe because it’s the only decent thing I have left after you ruined my wedding.”
For a second, I think he might accept that.
Then his gaze drops again, more carefully this time, to the line of the dress and my hand flies there on instinct. His eyes lift slowly back to mine.
My blood turns to ice.
He steps closer still, voice low and dangerous. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.”
The answer comes too fast.
He crouches in front of me, bringing us eye to eye, and somehow that’s worse than him looming overhead. Worse because it’s intimate.
“Elizabeth.”
I grip the edge of the seat so hard my fingers ache.
“If I have to take that dress off you myself,” he says, each word measured, “I’m not going to be gentle.”
A tremor runs through me.
“Please,” I say before I can stop myself.
His face stills, and I want to take back the words. He has always been most dangerous when he goes quiet.
“Please what?”
I hate that my voice shakes and I hate that I’m giving him this.
“Just... let me go change.”
His eyes search mine, catching on the panic I can’t quite hide. He knows there’s more here than defiance now. He just doesn’t know what.
Yet.
He straightens slowly and picks up the garment bag, tossing it onto the seat beside me.
“One minute,” he says. “Then I come back there myself.”
Humiliation and dread crawl up my throat together.
I snatch the bag before he can change his mind and stand. Clutching the bag, I force myself not to touch my stomach.
“I mean it,” he says as I edge past him into the aisle. “If you’re not out by then, I cut it off.”
I turn my head and glare at him, pouring every bit of hatred and fear I have into it. “I hope whatever part of you still thinks this is love rots.”
Something dark moves through his face. But when he answers, his voice is flat.
“Go.”
I hurry toward the back of the jet, silk whispering around my ankles, my heart pounding so hard I feel sick. The bathroom door slams behind me, and only then do I let myself breathe.
For one awful second, I just stare at my reflection and cry. I was so stupid thinking I was safe. And now I’m a hostage. And beneath the fitted lines of the dress, the slight curve no one at the church saw. No one but Dante knew to protect.
My fingers fumble at the back closures. I don’t have much time because out in the cabin, Lorenzo is waiting.
I finally get the dress off and tear open the garment bag. He grabbed clothes from my room. There are leggings, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. I almost sob in relief, because all of my hoodies are oversized.
A tap on the door has me freezing.
“Time’s up.”
I pull the shirt and hoodie on first, just in case as I call out, “Don’t you dare come in here!”
I’ve just pulled the leggings up when the lock turns and the door opens anyway. I whirl around, fury already on my tongue, one hand clutching the hem of the oversized hoodie down over my thighs. Lorenzo steps inside, then stops when he sees I’m dressed.
“Happy?” I snap, shoving the ruined gown toward him. “Or were you hoping to make more of a spectacle of yourself?”
His gaze sweeps over me once—black leggings, bare feet, one of my own hoodies hanging loose enough to hide what the dress no longer does—and something in his expression eases. Barely. But I catch it.
That only makes me angrier.
I thrust the gown into his chest. “Take it. You’ve already destroyed everything else.”
He takes it without a word.
The silence is unbearable.
I shove past him into the cabin, and this time when he reaches for me, I jerk free before his fingers can close around my arm.
“No. You do not get to touch me right now.”
He lets his hand fall, but his eyes stay on me as I stalk back to my seat and drop into it hard enough to jar my spine.
The hoodie pools around me, warm and blessedly shapeless.
Lorenzo follows a beat later, tossing the gown onto the seat opposite before lowering himself across from me with infuriating calm.
I stare at him.
Then I laugh. It comes out frayed and mean.
His jaw tightens. “Say what you want to say.”