Chapter 27 #2
By the time I step into the car, my hands are trembling. I tuck them beneath the fold of dress and stare out the window as the city slides by. I’ve always hated it here. It’s too cold in the winter and the summers are never long enough. But what I’ve wanted or liked has never mattered.
The car slows in front of a tall glass tower. I stare up at it through the window. He’s been this close this entire time. A sharp laugh leaves my lips. Of course.
It is sleek and expensive and modern, all clean lines and silvered glass. Nothing like Lorenzo’s dark penthouse where he keeps me among polished wood and dim rooms, as if I were part of the furniture that came with the marriage. This building gleams.
The doorman steps forward the second my driver opens my door.
“Ma’am.”
“I’m here to see Lorenzo Conti.”
He hesitates just long enough to tell me he recognizes the name but not me. That should sting less than it does.
“I’m his wife,” I say.
That gets me upstairs. The elevator is silent and fast. My reflection in the mirrored wall looks calm. Only the hand over my stomach betrays me.
When the doors open, I understand the cruelty of Lorenzo Conti in an entirely new way.
The penthouse is bright. Not bright in a decorative sense.
Bright in the bones of it. Sunlight spills in through floor-to-ceiling windows, pouring over pale wood floors and cream-colored furniture and glass and stone and soft, expensive textures.
The entire city stretches out beyond the walls like some impossible promise.
It is beautiful in a way his house with me has never been. This place feels open. Breathing. Alive.
Loved.
That is the word that rises, unbidden and merciless. Not because the apartment itself is loved. Because whoever was brought here was meant to be. I see it everywhere at once.
The warm throw folded neatly over the arm of the sofa. Fresh flowers on the kitchen island. A bowl of fruit. A tray with tea things set out as if someone’s comfort has been anticipated. A cardigan draped over the back of a chair that definitely does not belong to Lorenzo.
He made a place for her. Not a room A place.
I stand there for one stunned second too long, and the pain of it is so sharp it almost makes me laugh. So this is what it looks like to be the first choice. I blink hard and tell myself not to be pathetic. This isn’t about me.
It cannot be about me.
A woman in black steps into view from near the hall.
“Can I help you?”
I lift my chin. “I’m here to see Miss Miller.”
Her gaze flickers over me, to my stomach, then back to my face. I know the moment she places me. I wonder whether Lorenzo has told his guards about me. About the wife he left in the dark house while he brought another woman here into the sun.
“Wait here,” she says.
A minute later, footsteps sound in the hall.
Then Birdie appears.
She’s barefoot. Wearing a loose cream sweater that slips off one shoulder and soft gray pants that look far too comfortable. Her hair is down. Her face is bare. She looks startled for about half a second before her expression shutters into caution.
Worse—she looks at home. Not entirely. There is still tension in her shoulders, still the wariness of someone who knows a beautiful place can still be a cage. But she fits the light.
“Francesca,” she says slowly.
“Birdie,” I answer.
The guard lingers just out of earshot. Smart.
Birdie’s gaze drops briefly to my stomach, then rises again, and I catch something flicker in her face. Guilt? Sympathy? Recognition? I don’t want any of them.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I came,” I say, “to see where my husband has been hiding you.”
Her mouth tightens immediately. “I’m not hiding.”
I look slowly around the penthouse again, letting the place say what I don’t have to. “Clearly.”
“This isn’t what you think,” she says.
Something hot and bitter rises in my throat.
I turn back to her. “And what do I think, exactly?”
“Francesca—”
“Don’t call me that like we’re friends.”
Her chin lifts. “I wasn’t trying to.”
“Good.”
The word comes out sharper than I intend, and for a moment all we do is look at each other. Her hand drifts to her stomach, protective and unconscious. And it hits me. She’s pregnant. My mother’s words dance through my mind.
Get rid of the girl before he gets her pregnant.
Looks like I’m too late.
My hand goes to my stomach. The mirrored motion hits both of us at once and a terrible kind of understanding passes between us. We’re women carrying babies in a world built by men. For one treacherous second, I almost pity her.
Then I remember why I came.
“I’m not here for him,” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“I’m not here to fight over Lorenzo.”
A humorless laugh escapes her. “That’s a relief, because I don’t have the energy.”
Despite myself, I nearly smile.
Instead, I step closer and lower my voice. “I’m here because my father threatened my baby.”
“What?”
“He wants you gone.” I hold her gaze. “And he made it very clear that if you don’t disappear, he’ll find another way to solve the problem.”
Birdie’s fingers curl against her stomach. “He threatened your child?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flash with horror. Real horror. Not performed. Not polite. Good. Let her understand the scale of the rot.
I continue before she can speak. “I was supposed to come here and scare you off. Threaten you. Humiliate you. Remind you that I am the wife and you are the mistress.” I let out a short, bitter laugh. “A little difficult when everyone with eyes can see who Lorenzo actually made a home for.”
Her face changes at that. It’s not softer. Just more wounded.
“Fran—”
“There is no need to spare me.” I cut her off cleanly. “I have known for some time that I was never his first choice.”
The words hurt less out loud than they did in my head. Maybe because once spoken, they stop being a fear and become a fact. Birdie looks like she wants to deny it but doesn’t. That earns her a sliver of my respect.
I fold my arms, though it is partly to hold myself together. “Listen to me carefully. Whatever is happening between you and Lorenzo no longer matters to my father. He sees only one thing—his standing. And if he thinks you threaten it, he will come for you.”
She shakes her head once, fast. “Lorenzo would never let that happen.”
That hurts because I can’t say the same.
“No,” I say. “He would not let it happen knowingly. That is not the same as stopping it in time.”
A flicker of fear moves through her eyes then. Good. I want her afraid. Because fear keeps women alive.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks.
I glance down at my stomach. “Because if I let my father use me like a weapon against another pregnant woman, then I become exactly what he raised me to be. And because I know what it is to be trapped in something a man calls protection.”
We stand there in the bright, beautiful room, two women bound to the same man in completely different ways, and the irony of it almost chokes me.
Birdie wets her lips. “What does he want me to do?”
“Leave.”
A short laugh escapes her. “That would be easier if your husband didn’t lock the penthouse.”
“Yes,” I say dryly. “That sounds like Lorenzo.”
Her eyes sharpen. “So what are you telling me? To run? To stay? To trust you?”
Trust. What a ridiculous word.
“No,” I say. “I’m telling you to be smarter than he is possessive and faster than my father is cruel.”
She absorbs that in silence.
“And what about you?”
The question catches me off guard.
“What about me?”
“What happens if your father finds out you warned me?”
I look at her for a long moment. Then I answer honestly. “Then I suffer for it.”
Her face hardens. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You may not be in a position to decide that,” I say.
“I’m more in a position than you think.”
I believe her. That may be the most dangerous thing of all. I glance toward the windows again, toward the blazing skyline and the life Lorenzo carved out here for her. A life full of light, even if it is still a prison. Then I look back at Birdie.
“You need to make him listen,” I say quietly. “Because if Lorenzo believes walls are enough to keep danger out, then he has forgotten what kind of men made him.”
Her jaw tightens.
“He already forgot once,” she says. “I nearly lost my baby because of it.”
There is so much bitterness in that sentence that for the first time since arriving, I feel something close to solidarity.
“Yes,” I say softly. “That sounds familiar too.”
A silence falls. There’s so much more I want to say, but I’ve already said too much.
“I should go before your guards decide I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
Birdie doesn’t move to stop me. But as I turn away, she says, “Francesca.”
I glance back.
“Thank you.”
I hold her gaze for a moment. Then I say the cruelest honest thing I have left.
“Don’t thank me yet. If Lorenzo has really chosen you, then being loved by him may prove far more dangerous than being married to him.”
I leave her with that because it is true. As the elevator doors close and the bright penthouse disappears from view, I understand something with terrible clarity:
Birdie may be his first choice.
But first choices bleed too.