The Body Tells
POV: Evie
The body is a traitor with excellent timing.
Instead, I wake to my stomach staging a rebellion so complete, it feels less like nausea and more like a tiny internal government being overthrown.
I lie still. Very still. Eyes open. Breath shallow. One hand pressed flat to the sheets, the other curled loosely against my stomach because apparently I’m a woman who does that now.
That’s not acceptable. I move my hand away.
The room is dim, not dark. Dawn presses weakly at the curtains, gray and diluted, the kind of light that makes everything look as though it has already given up.
Door. Balcony. Window. Adjoining study.
Four. None of them useful.
My stomach rolls again. I sit up too quickly and immediately regret having a spine. For a moment, the room tilts, enough to remind me that I’m no longer the sole governing authority over my own body. There’s a second system operating inside me now.
Well, two, technically. Which is just greedy.
I breathe through my nose. Bad idea. The faint smell of last night’s firewood, rain in the stone, and the soap Teresa insists on having placed in every guest room hits me all at once. Lavender. I’ve never had strong opinions about lavender before. I do now. Lavender is a crime.
I get out of bed with the careful dignity of a woman trying not to vomit on Italian marble, which is perhaps the least glamorous kind of dignity. The bathroom is twelve steps away. I make it in eleven and a half.
Small win.
Afterward, I sit on the cold floor with my back against the tub and my cheek resting on my raised knee.
The tile presses through the thin fabric of my nightdress, grounding in a way thought can no longer accomplish.
My breath evens slowly, reluctantly, as though my body resents the idea of cooperation now that it has declared independence.
I press a hand low against my stomach. Still nothing. Not to anyone else.
Seven weeks, give or take.
Twins. Two heartbeats somewhere beneath my hand. Not yet large enough to announce themselves, already powerful enough to bend my entire future around them.
Ridiculous.
I close my eyes. For a moment, just a moment, I try to imagine them as something separate from consequence. Not leverage. Not liability. Not calculation.
Just…
No. That’s not useful.
I open my eyes again. The mirror across from me reflects a woman sitting on a bathroom floor before sunrise, pale in a way no makeup powder can correct, hair half fallen from its tie, expression too controlled for the situation she’s in.
She looks composed. She’s not.
By breakfast, I’ve made three decisions. First: no one sees me nauseous. Second: no one notices the clothes. Third: I build something useful before Alessandro discovers what I’ve not told him.
The problem with decision three is that it assumes he hasn’t discovered my secret already.
That thought arrives like a draft under a closed door. Cold. Uninvited. Plausible. I stop halfway through fastening my dress.
No.
I can’t go there. Not yet.
If he knew, something would have changed.
Wouldn’t it?
I stand in front of the wardrobe, one hand on the buttons, and examine the evidence. He hasn’t confronted me. He hasn’t altered the guards. He hasn’t summoned a doctor. He hasn’t made one of those quiet, decisive choices that announce ownership.
So he doesn’t know.
Probably.
That word is a disaster in a silk robe. I hate it.
I choose the navy dress because it gives at the waist. Not noticeably. Not if one doesn’t know to look.
Unfortunately, every person in this house has been trained to look.
I discard it. Choose black, like I have so many times before. Black hides everything. Grief. Blood. Poor decisions. The early stages of dynastic catastrophe. So very versatile. I pin my hair back.
Questions invite doctors. Doctors invite records. Records invite him.
The chain is simple. Awful, but simple.
I pause at the mirror. Not to check my appearance. To check my control. My expression is steady. Eyes clear. Mouth neutral. Nothing in it suggests nausea, fear, or the quiet, expanding reality beneath my ribs.
Good.
I leave the room, taking the stairs slower than usual. Not enough to be noticeable. Just enough to ensure the room doesn’t tilt again. Halfway down, a wave of nausea rises, sharp and immediate, forcing me to stop with one hand on the banister.
Count something else. Steps. Lines in the wood. The pattern of the railing. Anything but exits.
It passes. Barely.
I continue. The household is already moving.
It always is. The Vitale estate doesn’t wake so much as resume function.
Men appear in corridors already dressed, already armed, already inconvenienced by the continued existence of everyone else.
Staff move around them with the quiet efficiency of people who know exactly where power stands and how much space it prefers.
Nothing here hesitates. Nothing here falters.
Except me.
I pass the east hall. Two guards. One new. One familiar. The familiar one looks at me a fraction too long. Assessment. They know something has shifted in my pattern. Not enough to name, but enough to note.
I give him a look that suggests I know where he sleeps and I have opinions about it.
He looks away. Good.
The new one watches me without pretending not to. Also good. Predictable is easier to manage than polite.
I enter the dining room. It’s empty, except for Teresa. She stands near the sideboard with a silver coffee pot in hand and the expression of a woman who has already solved seven household crises before breakfast. “Good morning, signorina.”
“Is it?” I say.
Her mouth twitches. “Coffee?”
My stomach turns. Traitor.
I pick up my napkin slowly and place it on my lap. “No, thank you.”
“Tea?”
I nod. “Thank you.”
She pours without asking further questions, which is, in itself, a question. The cup is placed in front of me. Steam rises. I wait before touching it. Hot liquids are dangerous right now. So are smells. So is anything that requires me to trust my body.
Teresa watches me the way one watches a situation rather than a person. I take a careful sip. It stays down. Another small win.
“I’ll have something light,” I say.
“Of course.” She doesn’t ask what. She already knows.
Toast arrives. Plain. No butter. No jam. Nothing that might complicate the fragile treaty currently in place between me and my stomach.
I take a bite. Chew. Swallow. Wait. It holds. For now.
Teresa moves around the room, adjusting small things that don’t need adjusting. A plate aligned. A chair shifted half an inch. She doesn’t ask if I’m unwell. She doesn’t comment on the tea. She doesn’t look at my waist. Which means she has noticed all of it and chosen silence.
I wonder when we will acknowledge it. Not directly; that’s not how this house works. Acknowledgment here arrives through action. Through what is provided. What is withheld. What is ignored.
The moment it becomes spoken, it becomes real. And the moment it becomes real, it becomes reportable.
And once it can be reported…
I finish half the toast and push the plate away with enough force to be normal. Not enough to be questioned. I sit back slightly, one hand resting lightly against the edge of the table, grounding myself against the faint, persistent unease still threading through my body.
Across the room, Teresa replaces the coffee pot. She doesn’t look at me when she says, “You should eat more.”
“I will,” I grunt.
Later. When my body remembers how to cooperate.
She nods once, as if I’ve confirmed something she already suspected.