Pregnant with His Heir, Broke by His Love

The day I reached six months carrying the Vitale heir, my father was diagnosed with kidney failure.

The doctor said if we wanted to keep him breathing, we needed three hundred thousand dollars first.

I stood in the corridor clutching the payment slip, and I hesitated a long while before I finally dialed Lorenzo Vitale's number.

"Lorenzo, could you front me three hundred thousand for now?"

"My father's sick. The doctor says every day we wait, it gets more dangerous."

There was impatience in Lorenzo's voice, the kind a man uses on a debtor who's already borrowed too deep.

"Francesca Rizzo, that family of yours is a bottomless pit."

"Marrying into the Vitale name was the luckiest thing that ever happened to any of you."

"Don't think that because you're carrying my blood, you can put your hand out for whatever you please."

I gripped the slip tighter, my voice trembling.

"I'll pay it back someday…"

Lorenzo let out a cold laugh.

"You're a wife who sits in my house growing a baby. What exactly are you going to pay me back with?"

"You married up so you could skim tribute off my name and prop up your father's house. Life doesn't settle its debts that neatly."

Then a girl's sugary voice came through from his end of the line.

"Lorenzo, thank you for the collar you bought Lucky. Four hundred grand? That's far too extravagant!"

Lorenzo's tone went soft in an instant. "As long as it pleases you."

I stood frozen where I was, a bitter ache spreading through my chest.

At the door of the hospital room, my mother grabbed my arm, her eyes red, her fingers already worrying the worn hem of her sleeve. "Francesca, let it go. Lorenzo works hard for what he has too."

My father's voice was hoarse. His hand rose to straighten the collar of his hospital gown, as though even here, even dying, he refused to let the sickness show in how he held himself.

"I won't take the treatment. Don't bow your head in that family for my sake."

I looked at the gray creeping into their hair, and all at once I felt how horribly wrong I'd been.

They hadn't raised me so I could stand here with a swollen belly, begging tribute from the men who owned me.

And certainly not so they'd be disgraced right along with me, under the eyes of witnesses.

I took the payment slip back and steadied them both.

"Papà, Mamma, this illness, we're treating it."

"From this day, we don't beg anyone for anything."

——

When I pushed open the study door with the dissolution papers I'd drawn up, Lorenzo was seated at the desk with headphones on.

What was on the screen wasn't the ledgers of the Family.

It was a horror movie.

In the little window in the bottom corner, a girl sat curled on a couch hugging a throw pillow, her eyes rimmed red.

The moment the door swung open, a scream came from his end of the call.

"Lorenzo!"

He tore off the headphones at once, and the tenderness on his face vanished completely the instant he saw me.

He frowned, his voice turning cold.

"Francesca, are you never going to let this go?"

"You followed me all the way to the study, interrupted my work, over three hundred thousand?"

I stood in the doorway, my fingers curling tighter and tighter.

So this was his work.

He'd told me the Family was busy, deals piling up, that he didn't want to disturb my rest, which was why he slept in the study so often.

I'd believed every word.

I was so afraid of wearing him thin that I didn't dare wake him even when my legs cramped in the dark.

Afraid of annoying him, I'd brace myself against the wall and make it to the bathroom alone, even when the sickness left my stomach burning with acid.

But it turned out, all those nights I thought he was awake handling the business of the bloodline,

he was watching movies with another woman, soothing her little fears, listening to her coo.

Something seemed to lodge in my throat, and it was a long moment before I held out the document in my hand.

"Take a look."

Lorenzo didn't even lift his head.

"Just give the reimbursement slip to Carmela Greco."

"She'll transfer this month's household allowance to you."

Watching him take it all for granted, the way a Don takes the loyalty of men who fear him, I suddenly found it absurd.

I slammed the papers down on the desk with all the strength I had and said:

"This is a dissolution of the union."

"Lorenzo, we're finished."

"I paid the down payment on this house. I want my share of that money back."

For a moment, Lorenzo's face went blank.

But he quickly lowered his head and cracked one knuckle of his right hand, slow, deliberate, and said:

"Fine. You can go now."