Chapter 25 #2
When I finally come back out, she’s lying on her side with her back to me, one hand beneath her cheek, the other resting low over her stomach. Maybe she’s pretending to sleep. Maybe she isn’t. I can’t tell.
I don’t ask.
I get dressed in silence and leave before I do something reckless like crawl back into bed and ask her what the hell she was about to say when she said my name like that.
Morning comes too fast, and I sleep like shit in my office.
I’m in the kitchen with black coffee and three hours of sleep when my phone rings.
Unknown international number.
I answer on instinct. “Conti.”
“Mr. Conti, this is Dr. Halden.”
The name takes me half a second to place. London. The obstetric specialist consulted after the poisoning.
I straighten. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” the doctor says. “Quite the opposite. I apologize for the hour. I thought you’d want the dating estimate as soon as I had it.”
A pulse starts beating low at the base of my throat. Dating estimate.
I look through the glass wall toward the bright smear of morning over the lake. “Go on.”
“There can be a margin of error, of course,” she says in that precise, maddeningly calm physician’s voice, “but based on the scan measurements and hormone levels, Miss Miller appears to be approximately five months pregnant.”
There’s silence, but not on her end. On mine. I hear the words. Understand them. And for one strange second, they refuse to mean anything. The doctor keeps speaking, something about follow-up care and the next scan window, but her voice has already receded into static.
Five months.
I do the math without meaning to. Then I do it again, because the first answer feels like a fist to the sternum.
Then a third time, because maybe I’m the one who’s tired, damaged, losing my mind.
But the answer doesn’t change. Five months means that she was with Russo before Sienna died, or damn near close.
It means she smiled at me with those blue eyes while she was sneaking off to him. But how?
The line crackles. “Mr. Conti?”
I realize the doctor is waiting.
“Yes,” I say, though the word barely sounds human. “Thank you.”
I end the call and set the phone down very carefully. Then I stand there in the quiet penthouse kitchen with one hand on the counter and let the realization move through me like poison.
She knew how far along she was and still lied to me.
Five months. That means every look she gave me was already filtered through what she was hiding.
Every argument. Every touch. Every denial.
Had she been laughing at me the whole time?
Keeping me close because she needed something from me before returning to Russo with his child in her body? The thought turns black in my chest.
A floorboard creaks softly behind me, but I don’t turn. I know it’s her from the way the air changes. From the fact that I can feel her before I hear her.
“Who was on the phone?”
Her voice is rough with sleep. I turn to face her. Her feet are bare. One of my shirts hanging off her body, the hem brushing mid-thigh. Hair mussed. Face bare. A sight that should have softened me. It doesn’t. Not anymore.
“The doctor from London.”
And the moment our eyes meet, I know she knows. Not what the doctor said. But that something has shifted. Something fatal.
“What did she want?” she asks carefully.
I study her face. Every line. Every flicker. Looking now for what I missed before.
“How far along are you, Elizabeth?”
The question lands hard enough to drain the color from her face. There. Guilt or fear. The difference no longer matters to me.
She draws herself up, chin lifting. “I told you I wasn’t discussing this with you.”
I laugh. It’s the ugliest sound I’ve made in years.
“No,” I say softly. “You told me just enough to keep me in the dark.”
Her brows pull together. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means the London specialist finished reviewing your scans.” I take one step toward her. “It means you’re about five months pregnant.”
She goes completely still.
“Interesting number, isn’t it?”
“Lorenzo—”
“No.” I cut across her so sharply she flinches. “Do not say my name like that unless you intend to stop lying.”
Her mouth parts but I keep going, because now that the fury has started moving, it won’t stop until it’s stripped everything down to bone.
“Five months means you were fucking him around the time we met.”
Her hand moves instinctively to her stomach. That protective gesture should not irritate me, but it does. Because that baby should be mine or maybe I should have never fell for her lies.
“Five months means you stood in front of me all those nights already knowing.” Another step. “It means you let me make a fool of myself while you were laughing behind my back.”
Her eyes flash. “I never laughed at you.”
“No,” I say coldly. “You just lied more prettily than most.”
“That isn’t fair.”
Fair. The word means nothing in this kitchen.
“Fair?” I repeat. “You want fair? Fair would have been telling me before I tore apart half of Europe trying to find you.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Then simplify it for me.”
Her breathing changes. Fast now. Sharp. I know that look. The one that says she’s cornered and deciding whether to bite or run. I should step back. Instead I move closer.
“Did you know the first night we met?” I ask.
She says nothing.
“Did you know when you let me touch you?”
Nothing.
“Did you know last night?” My voice drops lower. More dangerous. “When I had my hand over your stomach and you looked at me like I had a right to be there?”
Her face crumples for one split second before she hardens it again. “Stop.”
“No.”
“Please.”
That should have stopped me. It doesn’t. Because I am thinking about the way I said love, and how every soft thing between us has been built on a lie older than us.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask.
I step back before I do something unforgivable.
When I speak again, my voice is perfectly level. “Get dressed.”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Fear flickers now, bright and unmistakable. “Where are we going?”
“We aren’t.” I pick up my phone. “I am.”
She stares at me. “Lorenzo—”
“Don’t.” I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. “Whatever excuse you were about to make, save it.”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“No?” I look at her then, really look, and let her see exactly what I think of what’s left unsaid. “From where I’m standing, Elizabeth, it looks like you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
The words crack through the room. And she can’t. I see her try. I see the war in her face and the instinct to say anything except the one thing that would actually matter. But she can’t.
So I nod once. A small, deadly motion.
“That’s what I thought.”
I leave her standing in the kitchen in my shirt, barefoot and pale and furious, and I do not let myself look back.
Because if I do, I might remember her in my bed last night.
And right now, I need the anger more.