Chapter 67
Two Weeks Before Roxanne Disappeared
The news was delivered like the thrust of a blade, the doctor beaming as she waved the wand over Roxanne’s belly and pointed out the small nub that was her baby’s penis.
A boy. Roxanne reached out and gripped Eric’s arm, her eyes welling with tears. She had known. She had felt this, in the same way that her mother had felt that a grandson was on the horizon; the fact had been in her gut this entire time. A baby boy.
She walked numbly out of the small clinic two hours north of San Francisco, a facility run by a med-school colleague of Eric’s. They had promised the exam would be kept off the books, and made the appointment under a false name, and accepted the payment in cash.
“It’s okay,” Eric said, for the fourth or fifth time, as he opened her car door and helped her into the passenger seat.
Her anguish swelled and she wished he would stop saying that.
It was not okay. If he thought her family was an overbearing presence in their marriage now, he had no idea of what was to come.
Tori’s baby had been a girl, so now everything in their family’s future was shouldered on this little fetus and his tiny little infant feet.
They were out of time. Roxy was starting to fill out in the face, the pregnancy weight causing her own feet to swell and her small breasts to balloon.
Her mother’s birthday party was in three weeks, and not attending wasn’t an option.
The last time Roxanne had missed a family event had been four years earlier, when she had gotten into a car accident on the way to the event and her aunt had sent a driver to the hospital to collect her.
When the emergency room doctor had refused to release her, both of her parents had shown up four hours later, then visited her at home every day for the next two weeks.
Eric had joked that he wasn’t so sure that they cared about her well-being as much as confirming that the car accident was legitimate and not just an excuse to miss her cousin’s retirement party.
“Don’t worry.” He fastened his seat belt and looked at her with a fierceness that both scared and comforted her. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll protect him.”
She dropped her head back against the headrest and stayed silent.
Eric’s passion was great, but it didn’t really matter how determined he was to succeed.
When Nico Accardi set out to do something, he did it—and he’d never let his only grandson have a normal life.
Her son would be raised and groomed to be the head of their criminal organization.
Roxanne could either get on board with that or be cut out of her son’s life.
It didn’t matter if it was legal or right.
Her father played dirty, and she’d spent her life watching him ruin his opponents.
He would think nothing of killing or destroying either of them if it meant getting the heir he needed.
“I love you.” Eric put the car into drive and reached for her hand. “It’ll be okay, Roxy. I promise you, we’ll figure it out.”
She nodded but didn’t believe him. Unless they killed her father, it would never be okay.