Page 89 of Freed
I undo the rest of the buttons, letting my shirt fall open. My hand barely shakes as I undo my pants, letting them open, too. Then I put my hand over the slight swell of my stomach. I watch him clock my movements and I see the moment he sees my baby bump.
The room is silent enough that I can hear my own breathing.
His gaze remains locked on my stomach, as though looking away would let him deny what he’s seen.
I pull my blouse closed again with shaking hands. “You have your answer. Take me back to Dante.”
He moves closer, and I freeze. When his hand covers mine, I’m torn between fear that he knows the truth and anger than I’m even in this position.
When he speaks, his voice is rough. “How far along did you say you were?”
When I glance up, he’s looking at my stomach and not me.
“Does it matter?”
“I’m putting together the timeline,” he says. “I’d like to know whether this happened quickly, or whether it’s been going on longer than I thought.”
For a second I don’t understand. Then I do, and the implication hits like a slap. My breath hitches and something vicious rises in me. So I decide to hurt him in the only way I know. With the truth.
“The funny thing is this is your fault. If you hadn’t tampered with my birth control, then I would have been protected from an unexpected pregnancy.”
In a voice so flat it chills me, he says, “There are ways to deal with unwanted pregnancies.”
Then I bark out a laugh, wild and disbelieving and edged with disgust.
“I said unexpected,” I snap. “Not unwanted.”
That lands. I see it. Something falters in his face that I don’t have the mercy to soften. I press a hand to my stomach again, not to shield it from him, but to claim it in front of him.
“This baby is wanted,” I say. “Very much.”
My lips curve, though it feels more like baring my teeth. And because he deserves pain, because he has earned every drop of it, I tilt my head and deliver the final blow.
“I do wonder,” I say softly, “if this baby will have my eyes or his.”
This time, the silence is not empty. It’s annihilation.
“Now,” I say, though my voice trembles, “call Dante and tell him when he can pick me up.”
Something detonates in the space between us. Lorenzo doesn’t move. His face is carved into cold, unforgiving lines, but his eyes—God, his eyes—are a storm barely being held back by force. Rage. Hurt. Possession. All of it churning so violently beneath the surface that for one irrational second I think the room itself might split under the pressure of it.
Then he smiles.
“That,cara,” he says softly, “will not be happening.”
My lips part. “What?” The word comes out thin, disbelieving. “But you said?—”
“I know exactly what I said.”
His voice cuts across mine like a blade. The promise he made already broken. He takes one slow step closer, and every instinct in me screams to back away, but I refuse to give him that too. I stand there shaking instead, hands clenched at my sides, my blouse still half-buttoned and my dignity in tatters.
“I wonder,” he says, each word precise and poisonous, “what your precious fiancé would say if he knew how easily you gave in to me in that dressing room.”
The blood drains from my face. And because he cannot bear to bleed alone, he presses harder.
“If he knew,” Lorenzo continues, his voice dropping to something low and devastating, “how you moaned my name when I was so deep inside of you. How you looked at me. How quickly your hatred blurred into something else.”
My heart lurches against my ribs.
