I took a deep breath and tried to speak. I wanted to apologize to the little one inside. I couldn't keep it. But as soon as I opened my mouth, the tears began pouring out.
They came without sound at first, just a heat behind my eyes and then a collapse, my shoulders folding inward, my hand still pressed to my stomach as if I could hold everything together by touch alone. The sobs came after. Ugly. Wrenching. The kind that steal your breath and leave you gasping against the bathroom wall at four in the afternoon in a house that has never felt like yours.
I had wanted to surprise Simone on his birthday. I had planned it. The timing, the words, the way I would tell him over dinner at the estate, just the two of us, with the candles lit and the guards posted far enough away that we could pretend to be a normal married couple for one night.
But it was obvious he didn't want this baby at all.
I was two months along, and God, I'd wanted this for ages. It had taken this long because he was never interested in intimacy with me. He came to our bed out of obligation when he came at all, and he hated the thought of children. He'd said it more than once. Kids were loud. Exhausting. A liability in this life.
Not too long ago, I'd found something on his desk in the back office of the social club. Lists. Careful, detailed lists in his own handwriting. One for expectant mothers. One for newborns. Formulas, cribs, the name of a pediatrician on the Upper East Side. He'd even priced out a nursery renovation.
I thought he was finally getting on board. I thought he'd somehow found out and was preparing in his own quiet, controlled way. The way a Don prepares for anything. Thoroughly. Without sentiment.
And now I felt really stupid. Stupid in a way that went bone-deep, that sat in my chest like a stone. Obviously, he wasn't getting ready for me at all. Those lists, that careful handwriting, the nursery plans. They were for Silvana. For Silvana's baby. For the child he had chosen to give another woman while his own wife lay in his bed wondering why he never reached for her.
That night, Simone came home earlier than usual.