31. Lorenzo
CHAPTER 31
Lorenzo
B y midday, I had an appointment set up for Isabella. Dr. Coleman offered to make a house call, but we wouldn’t see any immediate results for lab work, nor could I get the ultrasound that I wanted.
The drive to his office was silent. Isabella didn’t bother trying to talk; she barely even breathed. Fear radiated off her in a near-visible wave. If she was waiting for some kind of comfort or reassurance, hell would freeze over first.
I thought seeing her on Sienna’s couch, dirtying up one of her antiques with the oils on her hands, was rage-inducing. Hearing her threaten to leave with my child, however, pushed me past that point. There was no room for rage in the black void of ice that filled me. The knowledge that she may be pregnant was the only thing that had stayed my hand.
That was how I knew I didn’t have real feelings for her. If I did, I wouldn’t so easily picture squeezing her pretty throat until her blood vessels burst in her eyes. It was a relief, honestly. I liked fucking her, but it didn’t mean I wanted anything more than that.
And now that she was pregnant, there wouldn’t be a reason to do that ever again.
One of Dr. Coleman’s nurses was waiting for us the moment we arrived. “Isabella?” she asked, smiling widely. “Would you come with me? Dr. Coleman has an exam room all ready for you.” When I made to follow, the nurse’s smile faded around the edges. “Are you her husband?”
“I’m the baby’s father.” If there’s a baby .
Her eyes slid from me to Isabella, who was attempting not to look so miserable and failing miserably. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “But if you’re not a family member of the patient?—”
“He can come,” Isabella interrupted her.
“If you don’t really want him there, I can keep him out.”
Isabella pasted on a smile. “I do,” she said. “He is the baby’s father, and I want him to be able to see the ultrasound.”
The nurse didn’t look happy, but she nodded. “Of course.” She motioned for us to follow her, and we ended up in a room that looked near-identical to the one that Isabella and I met in, with the addition of infographics about uteruses and fetal growth.
Isabella sat on the exam table while the nurse asked her innocuous questions about her monthly cycle and which test she took while she strapped the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm. Once all of the preliminary paperwork was completed, the nurse picked up Isabella’s chart. “Dr. Coleman is in with another patient, but he will be in soon.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The nurse left, and we were alone again. Isabella looked at me, as if she had something to say, but then her eyes shifted and focused on the floor. “You could have tried to bar me from coming in with you,” I said.
She shrugged. “What’s the point in that?” she asked. At my scoff, she got angry. “What do you expect me to say?” she snapped. “That I want you here? I don’t, and you know it.” She crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself like she was afraid that she would shake apart. “When I pictured this moment growing up, it was always so soft, and I always pictured myself so excited for what was to come.” Her hands touched her stomach, like it was already becoming a habit, and I hated how pretty she looked.
Unbidden, the image of her belly round with my baby came to mind, and I would not get hard in a goddamn doctor’s office.
“Idealism makes people foolish.”
She glared at me. “How is it ‘idealism’ to want to start a family? I would argue that’s one of the most commonplace things that adults do every day.”
“The divorce rate is north of sixty-five percent,” I spat back. “All those kids from those families are left in fucked up, broken situations. Why would anyone bother to take a risk like that?”
“You did,” she said. “Once.”
My hands tightened into fists and Isabella noticed. Her skin became pallid. “Don’t speak about what you don’t know.”
She opened her mouth, and closed it again. And then: “Why do you even want a baby?”
“I don’t.”
Isabella sputtered. “Then why are we doing this?”
“It’s none of your business,” I said. “Your job is to carry my child to the best of your ability, not question my motives.”
“If you think I’m going to just?—”
There was a knock at the door, and Isabella’s jaw snapped shut. “Come in,” I called for her.
Dr. Coleman opened the door with the nurse from before hot on his heels. She filled him in on Isabella’s vitals and all the other information that she’d attained. Dr. Coleman looked at the chart himself, made some humming noises, and then looked at Isabella. “You got a positive pregnancy test?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He clapped his hands together once. It was a loud, booming sound, and Isabella nearly jumped three feet into the air. “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”
I wasn’t impressed. “That’s it? You don’t need to do a test here?”
“Our tests are nearly identical to the ones you get at the grocery store,” he explained. “We could do a blood panel, but those results would take a day or two to come back.”
“I want an ultrasound.”
“Please,” Isabella added. “I took a test weeks ago that was negative, but I never had my period after that. I want to know for certain.”
Dr. Coleman was at a loss, but he agreed, nonetheless. They all moved to the ultrasound suite at the end of the hallway, and the tech had Isabella sit on another exam table. She pulled her shirt up and wriggled her jeans down so that the tech could tuck a cover into the waistband. “This will be a little cold,” the tech said absently, like she had already said it a dozen or more times today.
She squirted a blob of blue gel onto Isabella’s belly, and then pressed the ultrasound wand directly into it, swirling the gel around as she went. “There’s your uterus,” she said and pointed to the screen. “And there’s the egg sack.”
“Does that mean?—?”
After a second, she pointed to a tiny blip on the monitor. It looked like an alien: vaguely humanoid shaped but with a head too big for its body. “There’s your baby.” She turned up the volume and a quick thud thud thud filled the room. “That’s the heartbeat. It’s nice and strong.”
I blinked once. And then again. She really was pregnant. “How far along?” Isabella asked breathlessly. “Can you tell?”
The tech measured the baby and its limbs. “Judging by its size, almost three months.”
“That first test was wrong, then,” she said more to herself than to me. “I was pregnant.”
“False negatives are surprisingly common,” the tech said in a jovial oh, well kind of way that made me want to break something. She did a few more measurements and then started printing pictures. “So far, everything is measuring right where we want it.” She handed the ultrasounds to Isabella. “Dr. Coleman will tell you when to come back in, but next time, we should be able to tell the sex if you’re interested.”
Isabella looked at the black-and-white photos in her hand. “Thank you,” she said, and her eyes looked shiny in the dull light.
When we stepped back out into the hallway, after Isabella had mopped herself off, I took the pictures from her. She didn’t let go immediately. “What do you need them for?” I asked, and her fingers reluctantly loosened.
She looked so forlorn that I grunted, annoyed, and tore off the bottom picture and handed it back to her. The smile that spread across her face only pissed me off further. I didn’t have to be nice to her. What the fuck was I doing?
After we set up her next appointment, I ushered her back to the parking garage. I watched as she climbed in before I did the same. When I got into the SUV, there were tears on her cheeks. She was practically petting the ultrasound I gave her, and I was half-tempted to take it back from her.
“There’s no use crying over things.”
She sniffled and swiped at her face. “Some people have an emotional range bigger than just rage and horniness. Besides, I’m pregnant and hormonal. Get used to it.”
“ Dannato marmocchia, sono queste le cose che devo sopportare .”
Isabella didn’t respond, and the rest of the drive was blessedly silent. We got back to the estate, and I grabbed her arm before she could climb out of the car, bringing her eyes to mine. “If you so much as open a window without my permission, I’ll put you in one of the holding cells in the basement.”
After cowing to me all morning, she seemed to have reached her limit. She twisted her arm out of my grip and moved so that she was as far as she could get from me without actually opening the door. “I get it,” she said. “Can I get out of the car and go inside, Don Vitali? I’m tired.”
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that I tasted blood. “Go.”
Isabella fled, the ultrasound picture still gripped in her fingers.