Page 101 of Freed
For a moment, all I can hear is my own breathing.
Then, very softly, I press a hand to my stomach.
“It’s going to be okay, little one,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Mama is going to make sure.”
Saying it out loud steadies me.
I close my eyes and try not to think about the blood. About the cloudy water. About the doctor’s face when she smelled the glass. About Lorenzo’s silence when I asked if he thought I’d done this to myself. But my mind won’t stop circling the same thought.
Someone knew about the baby.
A fresh wave of fear rolls through me, colder than the first. Not fear of Lorenzo. Not even fear of Dante. Fear of whatever has been moving in the dark around me all this time. Because if someone wanted me to lose this baby, then this is bigger than Lorenzo’s jealousy. And bigger than me.
And I don’t know who to trust.
Not even the man sleeping in the room next to mine. Especially not the man sleeping in the room next to mine. Except he isn’t sleeping. I know it before I hear the shouting downstairs. It’s faint at first. Just a low rumble carrying through the house. Then another voice rises. A man’s. Cut off almost immediately by something sharper—Lorenzo, barking an order in that lethal tone of his that brooks no argument.
I go still.
Another door slams. Then footsteps. Several pairs. Fast. The house is waking up. No. Not waking. Locking down.
I push myself upright with care, ignoring the protest in my side, and strain to listen. My pulse ticks harder with every muffled sound below. A woman crying. A man saying, “I swearto God, sir—” and then Lorenzo’s voice cutting through it like a blade.
I can’t make out the words.
Maybe that’s worse. Because my imagination fills in the gaps easily enough. He believes someone in this house tried to poison me. And Lorenzo Conti, when betrayed, he becomes merciless.
I close my hand over my stomach.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper again, though I am no longer sure whether I’m speaking to the baby or myself.
Downstairs, something crashes.
I flinch.
Then the shouting stops.
A long, terrible quiet follows.
20
Lorenzo
By the time I reach the kitchen, every servant in the house is lined up against one wall. The cook. Two maids. The night steward. Three guards. All dragged from their beds. All pale now. All staring anywhere but at me.
Good.
Fear is useful.
Cesaro stands near the table, the glass of cloudy water sealed in a bag beside him like evidence at a trial. He looks from it to me, his expression carved from stone.
“Sir?”
I don’t answer him right away. I let the silence drag. Let it crawl over the room until the only sounds are uneven breathing and one of the maids trying not to cry.
Then I say, “This came from Miss Miller’s room.”
That gets their attention. And every eye goes to the glass.
