“I’m pregnant.” I held up the stick. “With a baby.”
“Holy crap,” he whispered. “I mean, I assume it’s Sandro’s?” I nodded. “Wow. Have you told him yet?”
“No,” I murmured back, “and I’m not going to.”
Ricky shook his head. “Willow, I know that he hurt you, but you can’t keep his baby from him. The baby deserves to know their father.”
“The baby won’t know anything. I’m not keeping it.”
Ricky’s lips pursed closed again. “You’re not?” he huffed out, barely opening his mouth to do so.
“How can I keep this baby? I can’t do this with Alessandro, but if he finds out that I have it, he’s going to want to be involved. He’s planning to kidnap children, Ricky. I can’t expose a baby to that.” Ricky didn’t say anything, and I whimpered. “Say something, Ricky.”
“If that’s what you think is best, then I support you, obviously.” He rubbed his hand through his hair. “When are you doing it?”
“I’d like to do it as soon as possible,” I said. “And I want you here with me. I can’t do it alone.”
“I’ll buy a ticket right now,” Ricky said without hesitation. “I’ll be there tonight.”
I nearly started crying again from relief. “Thank you so much.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Willow. You’re my sister, my rock. I’d do anything for you,” He replied.
“Then I need you to do one more, really important thing for me,” I said. “You cannot tell Sandro or any of the Varassos that I’m pregnant. They’ll try to interfere if they know.”
“I want to be offended that you would even think I would, but I get it.” He leaned a little closer to the camera. “You have my word. I won’t say a word to a soul.”
“Thank you.” I was relieved to know that I meant more than the family to someone at least. “I’ll see you soon.”
“As soon as I can get there, kid. Get some rest.”
I nodded. “I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I closed my laptop, set it on the table, and fell back against the couch. I rested my hand over my stomach as sadness consumed me. “I’m sorry, little one. You didn’t ask for this.”
I closed my eyes and imagined myself having the baby instead. I pictured a little girl with curls like mine and Ricky’s, but Alessandro’s piercing eyes. She’d have his blazing tongue and my sharp wit, and she would be a goddamn force to be reckoned with.
I imagined us living in a little house not far from the beach, sitting on the back porch and enjoy
ing a glass of lemonade while Alessandro fought his way through assembling a playset that he knew he could put together without the instructions, so he’d thrown them away and was now angrily trying to figure out where the last screw went. I smiled, thinking about him pacing a hole in the living room floor while he waited for her to get home from her first date, or biting back tears during her graduation, because he was a strong man, and strong men didn’t cry. I saw us sitting in the living room with him, curled up on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, investing way too much time in the news of far off places that didn’t affect us, and getting into piddly arguments about what we thought before laughing it off when our daughter calls us old. There was such a beautiful life waiting for us on a tangential reality, but that life would never come to pass. I was doomed from the moment I met Alessandro Varasso, and I refused to doom another life as well.
22
Alessandro
“You with us, Sandro?”
I looked up at Luca, Molly, and Gabriel, who were all looking back at me with deep-seated concern.
“I’m here,” I replied.
Luca locked his fingers together and set his hands on top of his desk. “Do you need to take a day or two?”
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
When Willow left, she took everything I had with her. All of the joy I felt was still sitting in the places I’d last gotten to be with her. Her sparkling, diamond eyes and sweet smile had been replaced by her look of anguish, the last thing I saw before she left for California again. There was probably a time when my dad felt like he had something to look forward to every day, too, then he cheated on my mom, and that was the nail in the coffin. The only thing that kept him on the comfortable side of sanity was the way she made him feel, and once she stopped trusting him, he slowly started to solidify until he was nothing but a spiked crag. I was already undergoing the transformation. I was never going to escape the life, and my single spark of light had been snuffed out. What was the point of keeping anything in me besides what it took to be the steely killer my father had always wanted me to be?