Chapter 20
Isabella
Amalia was laying out a spread for breakfast the next morning when I came into the dining room. “What’s all this?” While she went all-out for dinner, Amalia generally kept breakfast small since she could never be sure who would actually be around to eat.
She shrugged. “Just felt like cooking, I suppose,” she said. “I get like that around my period. I like to make a lot of rich—”
Amalia kept talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. My mind was already trying to figure out dates and how long it had been since my last period. Three days late. I nearly choked.
“Isabella? Are you okay?” Amalia put her hand on my arm, and I jerked, an involuntary reaction.
“I’m fine,” I told her, voice hoarse and so obviously not fine.
“Sure,” she said and led me into a chair. “I’m going to make you a plate, and then you can tell me why you’re doing ‘fine,’ all right?”
I nodded. What else could I do? “Okay.” Amalia grabbed one of the white, porcelain plates that she’d left stacked at one end of the dining table and piled it high with food. Way more than either of us hoped to finish. “What army are you trying to feed?”
She looked at the plate and shrugged. “Who doesn’t like a stack of waffles?”
I took a few bites to appease her, but my stomach was a rolling mess. Amalia stared at me intently, waiting, and finally, I broke. “I’m late.”
For a moment, Amalia looked stricken, and then her face relaxed. “I asked Elio about your deal with Lorenzo,” she said. “You’re supposed to get pregnant, right?”
Her words sank in my stomach like a stone. “Yes,” I said, sounding as miserable as I felt.
“But you’re not happy about it?”
I glared at her. “Why would I be happy about that?”
Amalia gave me a sad smile. “Getting it over with sooner would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? Then, you can go back to your life.”
She wasn’t wrong about any of it. The faster I got pregnant, meant that I would get my life back that much quicker.
But it meant giving up a baby. All of my dreams of having a family had died on my bathroom floor the night I was attacked, so how could I ever get pregnant and give it up? It was beyond cruel.
If I didn’t, though, Gemma would be in danger, and I might never work off my father’s debt. I might never be free again.
“Can you get me a test?” I asked. “It might be too early to take one, but—”
“You’ll go crazy waiting?”
“Exactly.”
“I have one upstairs,” she said. “We can grab it after breakfast.” I didn’t know what, exactly, my face was doing, but whatever my expression was, it made her laugh. “It’s not like Elio and I are trying,” she explained with a shrug. “But we aren’t preventing anything either.”
I could not imagine having a child with a man like Elio Vitali, but I kept that thought to myself. It wasn’t kind…and I’m sure Amalia already knew how people felt about him. “Thank you,” I said instead.
We picked at our food for a little while longer, but were both too distracted to enjoy it now. Finally, Amalia decided to give up, and together, we packed up the leftovers. I followed her upstairs to the suite that she shared with Elio.
Amalia volunteered to wait in the bedroom while I took the pregnancy test. I tried not to stare at the tiny window as the alarm on Amalia’s phone ticked down the three minutes. When it rang, I picked up the test with shaking hands.
One line. Negative.
My breath shuddered out. I couldn’t decide whether I was glad to see the negative or not. My freedom hung in the balance, but I could push back the idea of giving up my child for a little while longer.
I opened the bathroom door, ready to tell Amalia about the results, but she wasn’t the one waiting for me. Lorenzo stood in his cousins’ bedroom with his arms crossed over his chest; a frown slashed across his face. Goddamnit.
“Are you pregnant, dolcezza?”
The question felt like a slap across the face. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
Lorenzo held out his hand, and even as I gritted my teeth, I gave him the test. I held my breath while he looked at the negative. His face gave nothing away, and when he didn’t say anything for a long while, my anxiety ratcheted up to a hundred.
His eyes darted to my face. “Do you have any fertility issues? From your attack?”
Fucking ow. That question was a slap to the face.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I said, attempting to keep my tone as even and neutral as possible.
My voice cracked trying. Damn it. “My doctors were more concerned with my kidneys functioning than they were about anything else, but they never mentioned any worry about my not being able to get pregnant.”
Lorenzo hummed, and my chest squeezed tight for a moment. If I was useless to him, what would happen to me? Would he get rid of me like Sienna?
“We can always do some testing with Dr. Coleman,” he said finally.
I nodded. “Okay.”
His eyes seemed to press into mine. “Or we can just keep trying. Things like this could take a while.”
To say that I was surprised was an understatement, and it made me immediately suspicious. Lorenzo wasn’t exactly the most patient, tolerant man that I’d ever met. “Really?”
He stared at me for a moment, and then he grabbed my wrist and tugged me out of Amalia’s room. I thought he might drag me to my room, but we ended up in his bedroom. I hadn’t stepped foot in here since the singular time that I’d slept in his bed.
“Are we going to—?”
Lorenzo smirked and pulled me against his body. I shivered as his heat seemed to envelope me. “Is that what you want, dolcezza?” he asked.
Sinking my teeth in my bottom lip, I shook my head. “No.”
That only made his smile deepen. “Is that so?” He leaned down, skimming his nose over my cheek, his lips across my neck. “If I were to touch you, I wouldn’t find you dripping for me?”
I resisted the urge to squeeze my thighs together on instinct. “No,” I insisted.
He nipped at my earlobe, just a hint of teeth that brought a soft sound from my throat, before he backed off entirely. “If you’re sure, dolcezza. You can let me know when you want me.”
“What if I never want you?” The question was out of my mouth before I could think, and I winced, knowing that it would sound like a challenge.
Surprisingly, Lorenzo didn’t call me a brat or any of the other things I imagined that he would say. Instead, he shrugged. “I’m not worried about it,” he said.
I scoffed. “You’re cocky.”
“Think of it how you like, Isabella. I’ve had you already, remember? It won’t be long until you’re begging for me again.”
“You’ll be lucky if I ever let you touch me again,” I said with a sneer.
Still, Lorenzo didn’t seem bothered by my declaration. Instead, he touched my cheek with the pads of his fingers. “We’ll see how that goes tonight, dolcezza.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to be moving in here,” he said.
I blanched. “You want me to sleep with you?” It wasn’t too long ago that this same man kicked me out of his room because he couldn’t bear to sleep beside me. “Why?”
Lorenzo clicked his tongue against his teeth.
“I’ve already told you, dolcezza,” he said.
But he hadn’t. Why was he dead-set on being the most irritating person in the entire world?
I could feel my eyebrows pulling inward.
He ran his thumb between them, smoothing my brow. “I get what I want. Simple as that.”
“You want—?”
“I’ll have your things moved.”