Chapter 26
Birdie
I stand in the kitchen trying to calm my racing heart.
It’s useless.
My emotions are everywhere—rage, hurt, humiliation, all of it ricocheting through me so fast I can barely separate one from the next.
Part of me is furious enough to let him keep believing the story he’s built in that arrogant, wounded mind of his.
Let him think I was sleeping with Dante before I even met him. Let him choke on it.
But that isn’t what hurts most.
What hurts is how easily he reached for that conclusion.
How quickly he would believe I betrayed him before he would stop and really look at the timeline.
Really look at me. A sharp, ugly laugh escapes me.
My God. He would rather think I cheated on him than consider the truth—that my lie has nothing to do with Dante and everything to do with him.
That thought knocks the air out of me more effectively than if he’d slapped me.
Because last night, half-asleep and half-undone, he all but said he loved me. And the worst part? A tear slips down my cheek. I was starting to feel the same way. Not now. Not with this cold, cruel version of him standing where that tenderness was supposed to be.
I swipe angrily at my face just as Lorenzo comes back into the kitchen. He’s changed. Dark coat on, keys in hand, expression carved from stone. He looks like war in an expensive suit.
“I said get dressed.”
I stare at him. “Why?”
His jaw tightens. “Do not fucking test me, Elizabeth.”
“Or what?” I cross my arms over my chest. “You are so unbelievable I don’t even have words for you.” I take a step closer. “No, wait. I do.”
I should stop but I don’t.
“I just keep thinking about how disappointed Sienna would be in you.”
His eyes flash black.
“Don’t you dare mention her.”
The fury in his voice should make me back down. Instead it lights mine.
“Why?” I ask, shaking my head. “Because you know I’m right?”
His nostrils flare. His hand tightens around the keys hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
“If she were still here,” I say, my voice turning sharper, “she’d say the same thing to you, and you know it.”
His face changes. It’s not anger now, but raw pain.
“But she isn’t,” he says, each word clipped, “because your fucking boyfriend killed her.”
“Fiancé,” I correct, just to barb him. “And Dante had nothing to do with her death.”
That earns me a scoff—cold, disbelieving, vicious.
“Of course,” he says. “The sainted Dante again.”
“Yes,” I snap. “Because unlike you, I don’t rewrite the truth every time it hurts my feelings.”
His mouth hardens. “The truth? You want to talk to me about truth?”
“Yes.”
He takes one step toward me. “Fine. Then tell me when exactly you planned to mention you were already pregnant when we met.”
The kitchen goes silent and my heartbeat stumbles. There it is again—the accusation, sharpened and polished until it sounds like fact.
“I was going to tell you, but—.”
“When?” he bites out. “After you married him? After you let me make a complete fool of myself? After I’d already bled enough over you to make the whole city laugh?”
I flinch.
“Do not stand there,” he says, quieter now, which is somehow worse, “and make it sound like I’m irrational for being furious.”
“I’m not saying you don’t get to be furious.” My own voice shakes, but I keep going. “I’m saying you don’t get to decide what the lie means before you even hear it.”
His eyes narrow. “Then explain it.”
I look at him. At the man who touched me like something sacred last night.
At the man who nearly said love and then recoiled from it like he’d burned himself.
At the man who now stands in front of me so determined to be betrayed that he would rather rip us both apart than admit there might be another answer.
And suddenly I’m too angry to protect him from the truth any longer.
“You want the timeline?” I ask softly.
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
I step closer.
Not enough to touch him. Just enough that he can’t mistake this for fear.
“When I met Dante, I was desperate. Scared. Alone. I reached for the first safe thing I saw.” My chin lifts. “And when I met him, I was already pregnant.”
I keep going.
“I never even met him until I woke up in Italy. Despite what you think, I wasn’t sneaking around. I wasn’t betraying you with some secret affair while you played the wounded idiot.” My throat tightens. “The reason the timing doesn’t make sense is because it has never been about Dante.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he asks, “What are you saying?”
I laugh once. “I’m saying you’re so desperate to hate me cleanly that you can’t even see what’s right in front of you.”
His face drains of all expression, and the keys go still in his hand.
“Elizabeth.”
For the first time since he walked back into the kitchen, my anger wavers. Not because I’m not furious anymore. Because I can see it now—the moment his mind turns toward the one possibility he’s been refusing to see.
“You tampered with my birth control,” I say. “Remember?”
The words land like a detonation. His whole body goes still and the silence that follows is monstrous. I can hear the refrigerator hum. The distant traffic beyond the glass. My own breathing, too fast and too loud.
He looks at me as if I’ve struck him.
“No,” he says.
It isn’t denial. It’s disbelief.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Now it is denial. Hard. Immediate. Almost desperate.
His hand comes up to his mouth for one second, then drops.
His eyes search my face like he’ll find the lie there if he looks long enough.
I let him look. I let him see every ounce of rage and grief and heartbreak I’ve been choking on since I found out.
“So, now you know, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“It does.”
“No,” I shoot back. “Because you never asked the right question.”
He takes a step back. Then another. As if the kitchen is suddenly too small to hold what I’ve just put into it.
“This baby—”
“Is yours,” I snap.
Lorenzo looks like the earth has shifted under his feet. He stares at my stomach, then at my face, then back again, like maybe the answer will change if he checks twice.
“All this time,” he says, but the sentence dies in his throat.
“Yes,” I say. “All this time.”
He drags a hand over his face, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks like a man stripped bare of every advantage—rage, wealth, certainty, all of it. Just a man standing in a bright kitchen with the truth at his feet and no idea what to do with it.
I should feel triumphant. I don’t. I feel tired. And hurt. And so angry I still want to scream.
His eyes lift to mine again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There it is. The question he should have asked first.
A bitter smile curves my mouth. “Because you ruin everything you touch.”
That hits. I can see it hit. But I’m not done.
“And because I knew,” I continue, “that if you found out, you’d do exactly this.”
“This?”
I gesture between us with both hands. “Turn my life into a battlefield. Decide what’s best for me. For the baby. For everyone. You don’t love, Lorenzo. You conquer.”
His expression twists.
“That isn’t true.”
“No?” My eyes burn. “Then what would you have done if I’d told you the day I found out?”
He opens his mouth and nothing comes out.
I nod once. “That’s what I thought.”
“Elizabeth,” he says, my name rough in his mouth.
I shake my head.
“No. Don’t.” Tears spill over before I can stop them, hot and humiliating. “You don’t get to look at me like that now. Not after everything you just accused me of.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Whose fault is that, huh? God, you should have assumed it was yours. You tampered with my birth control and then acted shocked when you found me pregnant!”
His breathing is uneven now. His. Not mine. A small, ugly satisfaction sparks inside me. Then dies just as quickly. Because none of this has fixed anything.
Lorenzo sets the keys down on the counter very carefully.
“Say it again.”
I blink. “What?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “Say it again.”
He means the baby.
Something in me hardens.
“No.”
His jaw ticks. “Elizabeth—”
“No.” I step back this time. “You wanted honesty? You got it. Now you can live with what you did to it.”
I turn and start for the hallway before he can stop me.
“Cara.”
The name hits me between the shoulders. I stop. Not because I want to. Because some pathetic part of me still responds to the tenderness in it.
Behind me, his voice drops to something raw and unsteady.
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
That makes me face him.
“No, you don’t.” I exhale. “If you care for me, then you’ll call Dante and tell him to come and get me.”
Lorenzo’s cheeks darken. “There is no way in hell that’s going to happen?”
“And why not? You were happy to think I was his whore moments ago. So, just keep pretending and let me go.”
“No.”
I shake my head. “I’m not asking. This is the best way, Lorenzo, for all of us.”
“You’re suggesting I let another man raise my child. It’s not going to happen. And how do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out the truth?”
“He knows the truth, you asshole. That’s why we were getting married. He needed a wife and I needed somewhere safe to go.”
He watches me. “Are you saying your relationship with him is—”
“A ruse? Yes. We’re friends. That’s it.”
The air in the kitchen goes deathly still. His face empties in that dangerous way it does when too many emotions hit him at once and he chooses to show none of them.
“A marriage of convenience,” he says at last, his voice flat. “To protect you.”
“Yes.”
“And he agreed to raise my child as his.”
“He agreed to help me survive.”
Something flashes in his eyes then. Not gratitude. A male, brutal sort of offense that makes me want to slap him all over again.
I fold my arms tighter over myself. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like he stole something from you.”
His laugh is short and vicious. “Didn’t he?”
“No.” My voice sharpens. “Because I’m not a thing you get to lose and find again, Lorenzo.”