My blood runs cold. “It’s not Mateo’s baby.” I don’t know if that helps, I don’t know if anything I say actually alters his plans, but I look up at him, sort of hoping it does. The circumstances surrounding Mia’s pregnancy may have been awful, but she wouldn’t be able to handle all this. Losing Mateo and then losing her baby? She would probably literally kill herself. Another woman in a long line, taken down by the machinations of the Morelli men.
Rafe frowns, briefly showing his confusion. “What?”
“The baby isn’t…” My stomach roils. I can’t eat this orange. Why do people have to bring me food and then ruin my appetite? Seriously. “Vince raped her in Vegas. Mateo isn’t the one who got her pregnant. It isn’t Mateo’s baby.”
Now his gaze drops. His eyes are hooded, his face not terribly expressive. I don’t have the mental capacity for this anyway, but this is definitely news to him. Given the heinousness of his own plans, it’s probably nothing that horrifies him, but I should at least tell him. If he’s planning to keep Mia as his pet, I could at least try to convince him the baby isn’t a problem, even if it is a boy.
Jesus Christ, is this really where we’re at?
What a fucking mess.
Rafe suddenly stands and my gaze jumps to him.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yeah. I have to go have pre-dinner drinks with my dickhead cousin,” he states.
“Well, wait. When is all this happening? I’m due in just over a week and I still have no monitor down here. Who do I reach out to if I go into labor?”
“My number’s in the phone,” he tells me. “If you feel it coming on, shoot me a text and I’ll find a reason to come down and visit so I can ‘discover’ you’re in labor.”
He still didn’t tell me when to expect this, but he’s clearly done giving me information. Now he has to go above stairs and play the happy houseguest.
This is un-fucking-believable.
This is not what I wanted at all.
Once Rafe is gone, I sit down on the bench and finish eating my orange while I ponder my new future. If Mateo didn’t find the money I stashed when I wasn’t sure what our break-up meant, I’ll have more money than whatever Rafe and Dante plan to give me.
Still, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to do this. Mateo hasn’t exactly left me with many other choices, but as I finish my orange, I check to make sure Maria hasn’t come, then I go dig my hidden phone out. It’s sort of funny, all these years later, that I have a secret phone. Francesca framed my ass with a fake secret phone the first time; now I have a real one.
Actually, it kind of bums me out. The first time I got relegated to this dungeon, I would never have had a secret phone I used to betray Mateo. Now here I am, near to bursting with his baby, and I’m going to sit down here by myself while Mateo’s fucking cousin and treacherous brother plot to overthrow him and take his power. To kill him.
I don’t want him dead. I can’t even imagine that reality. I know I had a life before Mateo, but it’s difficult to imagine it now. What does that look like? What does it feel like? When I’ve escaped Chicago with my life and my kids, when I have to assemble a whole new life for myself somewhere else on my own, will I lie awake at night, haunted by these memories? Will every cup of black coffee I pour at the restaurant I will inevitably work at remind me of Mateo? Every time I see a less impressive man in a suit, will I think of the overwhelming presence that was Mateo Morelli? How do I go back to a normal life and act like none of this ever happened?
And what happens to Mia? She always manages to land on her feet, but what about the baby? Rafe wants to fuck her—he doesn’t want to raise her baby.
Everything sucks.
All of this sucks.
At least it gives me something else to think about, something to focus on other than the loneliness. I picture a little house in a little town, somewhere thousands of miles away from any Morellis. Lily will miss Isabella. She’ll miss Mateo. When Rodney died, she was little. She’s never missed him, but she’ll miss Mateo. Rosalie will miss Mia and Mateo. Life with a single mom is going to be a real shock to her system—she’s spoiled rotten with her monstrous playroom, her nanny, two moms. She’ll miss Bella and West. She’ll adjust, but how will I explain what happened to all of them?
This is a fucking disaster.
I can’t believe this is happening.