Chapter 21 #2
He jerks his thumb toward the back corner without looking up.
I walk to the bathroom on legs that feel disconnected from my body, push through the door into a space that is exactly as disgusting as I expected—harsh overhead lighting that makes everything look sickly and yellow, dubious stains on the linoleum floor, graffiti covering the stall door, a mirror so scratched and dirty I can barely see my reflection.
But it has a lock. That is all that matters.
I engage the deadbolt with a decisive click, the sound echoing in the small space, and lean back against the door for a moment, just breathing.
This is insane. I am standing in a gas station bathroom at two-forty-five in the morning about to take a pregnancy test while hiding a bomb in my closet at home and facing an impossible deadline to commit murder.
My life has officially gone off the rails.
I rip open the box with more violence than necessary, the cardboard tearing under my bandaged fingers, and pull out the test. The instructions are printed in tiny font that I have to squint to read in the harsh lighting—or maybe my hands are just shaking so badly the words keep blurring.
Step one: Remove cap.
Step two: Hold test stick under urine stream for five seconds.
Step three: Replace cap and lay flat.
Step four: Wait two minutes for results.
Simple. Straightforward. Easy.
Except my hands will not stop shaking and my breathing is coming too fast and I cannot make myself move.
What if it is positive?
What if I am pregnant with Dante's baby or Gabriel's baby or Luca's baby, and I have a bomb that Patrick wants me to use to kill the father?
What if it is negative?
What if this is just stress and grief and fear manifesting as physical symptoms, and I am spiraling over nothing?
I don’t know which answer terrifies me more.
Move, I tell myself. Just move. One step at a time.
I force my body to function, to do what needs to be done, and two minutes later I am standing at the sink with the capped test sitting on the edge, watching the second hand on my watch crawl around the dial.
One hundred and twenty seconds to know for sure.
One hundred and twenty seconds that feel like a lifetime.
I stare at myself in the scratched mirror while I wait. I look terrible—pale skin, dark circles under my eyes so pronounced they look like bruises, hair escaping from the messy bun I threw it in before leaving the house. Luca's hoodie drowns my frame, making me look smaller and younger than I am.
I look like someone who has not slept in days.
I look like someone carrying impossible choices.
I look like someone who might be about to become a mother.
The thought makes my stomach flip, and for a moment I think I might throw up again, but I force the nausea down through sheer willpower.
Twenty-eight hours, a voice in my head reminds me. Twenty-eight hours until Patrick kills Erin if those men are not dead.
But what if one of those men is the father of the baby potentially growing inside me right now?
What kind of person kills their child's father to save their sister?
What kind of person lets their sister die to save their lover?
What kind of person am I?
I have spent my entire life being Erin's protector.
Being the shield between her and danger.
I took bullets meant for her—metaphorical ones, mostly, but I would have taken real ones if it came to that.
I gave up my freedom, my future, my identity to marry Dante in her place so she could run away with Dolan.
Can I stop now? Can I choose my own happiness over hers?
Do I even know how to be anything other than Erin's bodyguard?
My watch shows two minutes have passed.
Time to look.
I reach for the test with hands that will not stop trembling, picking it up carefully like it might explode, and turn it over to see the results window.
Two lines.
Two unmistakable, undeniable lines.
Pregnant.
The test slips from my fingers and clatters into the sink. I grip the edge of the counter to keep from falling, my knees suddenly liquid, my vision swimming.
Pregnant.
I am pregnant.
With Dante's baby or Gabriel's baby or Luca's baby. With a tiny cluster of cells that is growing right now, right this second, inside my body. A life that depends on me completely. A child who did not ask to be brought into this mess but exists anyway.
Oh God.
Oh God, I am pregnant.
The implications crash over me in waves. This is not just about choosing between Erin and the boys anymore. This is about choosing for this baby too. This life that has no voice, no say, no ability to protect itself.
This baby deserves to know its father.
Deserves to grow up with Dante's fierce protectiveness, Gabriel's steady strength, and Luca's infectious joy.
Deserves a chance to exist in a world where all three of them are alive to love it.
And suddenly the decision becomes crystal clear with a certainty that settles into my bones.
I cannot plant that bomb.
Will not kill my child's father—fathers?—to save Erin, no matter how much I love her.
Will not rob this baby of the chance to know them.
Will not destroy the family we have built.
Erin is strong. Erin is smart. Erin will understand. She has to understand.
And if she does not—if something happens to her because I chose myself and this baby—I will have to find a way to live with that guilt.
But I cannot live in a world without Dante, Gabriel, and Luca.
I will not.
I grab the test from the sink, rinse my hands, unlock the door, and burst out of the bathroom. The clerk barely looks up as I race past him, the bell chiming overhead as I push through the doors back into the cold October night.
I start running.
My lungs are burning within the first five minutes, my legs screaming in protest, but I do not slow down. I run past the park, past the bodega, past Vittorio's with its warm lights and the smell of garlic bread wafting from the kitchen.
I have to tell them. Have to show them the test, have to explain everything, have to figure out together how to save Erin without sacrificing ourselves. Have to—
The house appears in the distance, every light blazing like someone has turned on every switch in panic. My heart sinks even as my legs pump faster, carrying me up the front steps, through the door I apparently did not lock properly behind me—
Gabriel and Luca are in the foyer, both looking frantic. Gabriel's hair is sticking up like he has been running his hands through it, and Luca is pacing, his shoes clicking against the marble floor with agitated rhythm.
They freeze when they see me.
"Where the fuck have you been?" Gabriel demands, and there is genuine fear in his voice, raw and undisguised. "We woke up and you were gone, we searched the entire house—" He gestures wildly around him. "We thought—"
"We thought Patrick got to you," Luca finishes, his voice cracking. "Or that you—that you decided to run. That we lost you."
The front door opens again behind me, and Dante strides in, his hair disheveled, still pulling on a jacket over his t-shirt, his expression thunderous.
"She is not on the road, I checked the whole perimeter up to Fifth Avenue, I think we need to—" He stops dead when he sees me, and the relief that floods his face is immediately, violently replaced by fury. "Where the hell were you?"
"I can explain—" I start, my breathing still ragged from the run home.
"Do you have any idea how scared we were?" Dante is advancing on me now, and I can see his hands shaking, can see the terror beneath the anger. "We thought something happened to you. We thought Patrick took you. We thought you did something stupid —"
"I needed to—" I try again.
"To what?" Gabriel cuts me off, and he sounds angry now too, all the fear transforming into something sharper, more volatile. "To disappear in the middle of the night without telling anyone where you were going? To leave us to wake up alone and panic because we had no idea if you were safe?"
"We almost called every hospital in Manhattan," Luca adds, his voice hard despite the tremor underneath. "Almost went to the police. Almost—God, Lina, we thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere."
They are all looking at me now—three men who love me, who were terrified for me, who are currently furious with me for scaring them.
And I realize I am still clutching the pregnancy test in my hand, the two lines probably smudged from my sweaty palm during the run home.
"You are going to be punished for this," Luca says, and despite the anger in his voice I can hear the relief underneath, the love. "So fucking hard, Lina. You scared ten years off my life."
"I know," I say, and I do know, can see it written all over their faces—the fear, the panic, the desperate relief now that I am standing in front of them safe and whole. "I am so sorry, I really am, but I had to—I needed to—"
I am fumbling over my words, my brain still scattered from the run and the revelation and the weight of everything I need to tell them.
Just show them, a voice in my head says. Words are not working. Just show them.
I hold up the pregnancy test in my hand, the two lines clearly visible in the bright foyer lighting.
"Surprise," I say weakly, and my voice cracks on the word.
All three of them go absolutely silent.
The anger drains from their faces like water, replaced by shock so complete it is almost comical.
Gabriel's eyes go wide, his mouth falling open slightly.
Luca goes completely still, his pacing stopped mid-step.
Dante just stares at the test like it might be a hallucination, like if he blinks it will disappear.
"Is that—" Gabriel starts, his voice barely above a whisper.
"A pregnancy test," I confirm, and now that I have started I cannot stop, the words tumbling out in a rush.
"And yes, it is mine, and yes, it is positive, and no, I do not know whose it is because we have all been—well.
You know. And I am sorry I scared you, I really am, but I had to know before I made any decisions, and I could not do it here because what if someone saw me, and I just—I needed to know—"
Dante closes the distance between us in two long strides and kisses me so hard my head spins, cutting off my rambling. His hands cup my face with a gentleness that contrasts completely with the intensity of the kiss, and when he pulls back his eyes are bright with unshed tears.
"You are pregnant," he breathes, and there is wonder in his voice like he cannot quite believe it.
"I am pregnant," I confirm, and saying it out loud to them makes it feel more real somehow, makes it settle into my bones as fact rather than possibility.
"With our baby." Not a question. A statement of fact, absolute and undeniable.
"With someone's baby," I correct weakly. "I do not know whose specifically—"
Luca lets out a whoop loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood and sweeps me up in his arms, spinning me around while I clutch the pregnancy test and laugh despite everything. When he sets me down, his hands frame my face and he kisses me hard, his smile so wide I can feel it against my lips.
"You are having a baby!" He pulls back just enough to look at me, his green eyes bright with joy and tears. "Our baby. Holy shit, Fiorella, you are having our baby."
"Luca, be careful with her," Gabriel says, but his voice is choked with emotion and he is smiling—actually smiling, that rare genuine expression that transforms his entire face.
He moves closer, his hand settling on my lower back with careful reverence like I might break.
"Pregnant women need to be treated gently. "
"I am not suddenly made of glass," I protest, but my voice is thick with tears. I didn’t even realize I was crying.
Gabriel turns me to face him, and his hands are shaking as they cup my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears on my cheeks.
"You are having our baby," he says, and there is something raw and vulnerable in his expression that I have never seen before.
"God, Rosalina. You are pregnant with our child. "
"Our child," I repeat, and the words settle into my chest warm and right. "Yes."
He kisses me then—softer than Dante, slower than Luca, but no less intense. I can taste salt and realize he is crying too, silent tears tracking down his face as he holds me like I am the most precious thing in the world.
"I love you," he murmurs against my lips. "I love you so much, Bella. Both of you."
"I love you too," I whisper back, and then Dante is there again, pulling me against his chest from behind, his arms coming around my waist with hands that settle protectively over my still-flat stomach.
"We are having a baby," Dante says into my hair, and his voice breaks on the words. "An actual baby. Our family."
"Doesn’t matter whose it is biologically," Gabriel adds firmly, and Luca nods emphatically in agreement. "This baby is ours. All of ours. We are in this together."
"All of us," Luca confirms, his hand joining Dante's and Gabriel's on my stomach. "You, this baby, and three incredibly devoted fathers who are going to spoil both of you absolutely rotten."
The word fathers settles over me, and I realize that is exactly right. This baby will have three fathers, three men who already love it fiercely despite it being barely more than a cluster of cells. Three men who will protect it and nurture it and teach it and raise it together.
Our family.