Chapter One
Lindsay
I’M EXHAUSTED. But then, that’s nothing new.
A side effect of the great and glorious world of pregnancy, which I didn’t expect to become acquainted with at twenty-one, but decisions were made.
I trudge down the dark Roman street, my joints aching, my whole body burdened with the weight of my exhaustion.
Tending bar for rowdy students on holiday is becoming more and more irritating, and ever since my roommate vanished—ghosted me without an explanation after roping me into this in the first place—I’m extra concerned.
There’s supposed to be money at the end of this pregnancy. Of course, now it’s starting to feel more real, and my agreement in the first place feels shortsighted.
I needed to get away from my family, and going to Rome for school—when the opportunity came up—had seemed like a wonderful idea.
But the first apartment situation I got myself into was a scam, and I lost all of my savings on it.
Then I got sick, and my GPA dropped, and I lost some of the stipend that was being provided by my program.
It’s amazing that an extended bout of the flu that turns into pneumonia can have such an intense effect, but it did for me.
Then I met Vittoria, who was new to the city, and attending school for the first time.
A year younger than me, but fun, vivacious and quickly becoming a dear friend, as well as a roommate.
But there were things about Vittoria that didn’t add up from the beginning.
Her stories about her family shifted often, and I could see that her relationship with her father was complicated.
Controlling, and powerful, was the impression that I got.
He also helped us get into the apartment that I’m in now, which is in a much better part of the city than the one I was in before.
He also paid for quite a few things when we were running low, and that was when the surrogacy deal was introduced.
Apparently, Vittoria has an older brother.
A married older brother whose wife was having trouble conceiving, and they wanted a surrogate. There was a lot of money on offer. Some at the beginning and during the pregnancy, and most at the end. It was like someone had waved a wand and potentially solved all of my problems.
I’ve been through enough in my life that nine months of discomfort didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
Yes, I know the inherent risks in pregnancy, but I’m a risk-taker, because I’ve had to be.
Because my parents certainly never gave me anything, and it was a risk to move away from my small town and go to Rome in the first place.
I risk my safety every day, tending bar, walking through the streets, being a woman alone in the world.
As for the emotional ramifications? I just choose not to dwell on them. I know I’m not keeping the baby. It isn’t mine. No matter what biology says, it isn’t mine.
So, I agreed to the pregnancy. All was going well until it came up right before the procedure was done that they decided his wife’s eggs weren’t viable.
They asked if they could use mine. If it could be switched to basic artificial insemination, which would be a much more straightforward process.
At that point, I was already in too deep. I’d already planned my life out with that money that I was going to get. The idea that I was going to be able to start my career as a fashion designer with all that money in my bank account… Life-changing.
It’s a competitive industry. And I know that I’m in the right place. My plan is to move to Milan, to do internships, and to be able to live while I do them, to throw myself into those entirely, because I don’t have to worry about things like putting a roof over my head.
It’s a gift, in a world where sudden gifts rarely occur.
So I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even really think. I agreed to the artificial insemination, right there in the office, and it was done.
I’ve never met the father of the baby. Or the mother. Vittoria said that they wanted to keep it more anonymous, because of how difficult it was for her brother’s wife to accept that she wasn’t the one carrying the baby.
I don’t question the way that women feel about those things.
It’s intensely personal. I myself have never really wanted children, mostly because with a family as dysfunctional as mine I can’t imagine raising any.
I’ve been working my butt off for years, trying to get where I want to go.
Trying to wed practicality to what many people feel is an impractical goal.
I have to believe in my own talent, because nobody else does.
And, given that, I’ve had to become my own fiercest advocate.
But now I’m pregnant. And the baby is mine. I try to shove that thought aside as I push the door to my apartment open. The room is dark, but something feels wrong. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. There’s someone else in here.
“Vittoria?”
I hear a shift. And then the light goes on. “No.”
There’s a man sitting there. Dressed all in black from head to toe. He’s tall; I can tell that even as he’s sitting there. His dark hair slicked back, his face angular, devastating. There are tattoos on his hands, and I can see more going up his neck.
Danger.
I don’t hesitate. I reach out to my left, grab hold of the vase sitting by the door, and I fling it at him.
He moves, but it catches the side of his face, and then he’s up.
Up and moving toward me. I scream, as loudly as possible.
I’m determined to alert my neighbors. I race into the kitchen, open a drawer and start looking for the most suitable knife.
I’m like a feral creature. Driven by the desperate need to protect, not just myself, but the life inside me.
It’s not my baby. I’ve been firm on that from the beginning.
But I’m the one who sustains this light, this life. I’m the one who has to keep them safe. I realize right then that I’ll die defending them.
I pull out the biggest knife in the drawer, and brandish it at him.
There’s an abrasion on his cheek, blood dripping down. And I feel satisfied that if nothing else, I’ve drawn first blood.
“That was a mistake, Lindsay,” he says.
His English is accented, but that’s not the most troubling part of what he’s just said.
He knows my name.
This isn’t random.
“Get out of my house,” I say. “Or I will gut you like a fish.”
And I know full well how to gut a fish. My summer working on a fishing boat in Alaska taught me a lot of things. One of those things was the practicalities of cleaning your catch. Another was how to defend myself against men that I didn’t want anywhere near me.
“You little demon. I will have that knife away from you before you move at me. You surprised me once, but you will not do it again. But I would rather we did not take the risk that you are injured.”
“I’m willing to take that risk,” I say. I’ll be damned if he’s taking me to a secondary location. It’s not happening.
He lunges forward, and I slash the knife toward his face.
He grips my wrist, and it’s like being caught in an iron vise.
There’s nothing I can do. Nothing. I can’t even move.
He’s so much stronger than I realized. I’ve caught men off guard before, hit them when they weren’t paying attention and made an escape. I’ve had to.
But I’ve never been…stopped like this. Held.
“Drop the knife,” he says.
“I won’t,” I shriek and try to kick at him, while being conscious that I could end up hurting myself.
“Drop it, Lindsay.”
I snarl, because he will not take me so easily. I didn’t make it this far in life to be killed by an inked-up thirst trap in a custom suit. This man whose clothes cost more than I’ve ever seen before. This man who thinks he can take me, own me, control me, because he’s a man.
I’ll die here, thanks.
Fighting.
He squeezes my wrist, and presses his thumb hard into a spot on my hand, and my body acts without my permission, flexing and releasing the knife. It clatters to the kitchen floor, and I howl with rage.
What stops me cold is how beautiful he is. I’ve never been one for church, but I have heard enough stories to know that Lucifer, the devil, was a being of light and beauty. I never understood how a theoretically evil being could be beautiful.
I do now.
This man is like both. Pitch-black and bright light, he radiates it at the same time as he draws all things toward him. A black hole of brilliance.
Eyes like the night, high-cut cheekbones, a mouth that looks both cruel and inviting.
And then I’m not frozen anymore because he moves me.
He lifts me up, puts me over his shoulder, and I make as much noise as possible, swinging and kicking.
“You will not find help here,” he says. “This is a family building.”
A family building.
What does he mean?
I don’t have time to contemplate it. I have to keep fighting.
I yell, and it’s true; not a single door opens. No one in the apartment building seems worried about the woman yelling like she’s being killed.
One door opens, and a man comes out, his eyes meet mine, and he looks worried.
I want to scream at him, Imagine how I feel! But I don’t.
“Help me!” I say.
“This is a Corretti building,” my assailant says to my would-be helper. “And I am a Corretti.”
The man shuts the door as quickly as he opened it.
Corretti. I don’t know that name. And yet, there’s an instinctive echo of fear inside of me.
The way that he says it, like he might have told someone he was carrying a bomb.
But I don’t give up. Because I’m not so easily cowed. I keep screaming, kicking at him, hitting him with my fists.
“I’m losing my temper,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Far be it from me to make a kidnapping easy for you.”
“But it is easy,” he says. “It is not…my first rodeo.”
The expression, and his accented English, feels pointedly sardonic, and designed to make it clear that he knows about me. That he knows I’m American. And likely much more besides.
He doesn’t take me in the elevator. He carries me down the stairs, onto the street, where there’s a dark black car pulled up to the curb.
I fight for my life, because that’s exactly what I’m doing. He opens up the car door, and shoves me inside, all the while I am hissing and scratching. He gets near me, and I strike at him, my fingernails making a connection with his face.
“Enough,” he says, closing the car door. The driver pulls away from the curb immediately, but I don’t stop struggling.
He grabs hold of me, twists me away from him, pinning my arms down in front of me. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” His growl reverberates through me, and I ignore the shiver it sends down my spine that doesn’t feel exactly like fear.
“Good,” I say. “Better than waiting for you to do it.”
“I will not hurt you,” he says.
“Weird, I don’t really trust the word of a heavily tattooed gym rat removing me from my apartment against my will.”
“You should trust my word,” he says. “It is as iron. When I make a promise, I do not break it.”
Fucking men. I’m supposed to believe him because he says, while he’s actively kidnapping me?
I should probably fawn on him, do something that suggests I have a modicum of self-preservation but he’s too ridiculous.
“Forgive me for not instantly believing every word that comes out of your well-formed mouth because you say that you’re so honest. You know what they say about people who have to announce their good qualities. ”
He smiles at me with that same well-formed mouth. A smile so cruel and stunning that I’m frozen with it. “Did I say it was a good quality? It is part of who I am. I’m not a man who needs to lie, cara.”
Part of me wants to keep the baby a secret, because it might make me seem more vulnerable to him, but I realize then that vulnerability might be the only real strength I can use against him. Depending on how depraved he is.
“I’m pregnant.”
“I know,” he says.
“How…?”
“Because. I’m the father of your baby.”