Pregnant with His Heir, Broke by His Love

Lorenzo tore into the bedroom with the color drained from his face, scooped me up, and ran for the hospital.

The doctor said my condition was dangerous, that the pregnancy needed to be stabilized at once.

Lorenzo stood outside the operating room and, for the first time, lost every shred of the composure that made men lower their eyes when he entered.

"I don't want you to save the baby! Save the mother! Did you hear me?! I said save the mother!!"

When I woke, he was sitting at the edge of the bed, his eyes bloodshot, his forearm still wrapped in bandages.

Carmela folded her hands at her waist and lowered her voice to tell me that on the way to the hospital, the car had nearly gone under a delivery truck.

It was Lorenzo who had thrown himself over me to shield me, his arm laid open by the shattered glass. More than a dozen stitches.

And he hadn't waited for the anesthetic to take hold before coming back to the room to watch over me.

I shrank away from the arm reaching for me and asked softly,

"Lorenzo, what exactly do you mean by all of this?"

Lorenzo looked at me with reddened eyes.

"All because of one gift, you're going to put us through all of this. Is that it?"

"Adriana just got back into the country. That gift was nothing more than common courtesy."

"You only saw a seven-figure necklace. You didn't see that every single thing under this roof, all of it, I bought for you and the baby."

"You couldn't sleep, so I had the mattress made to order for you."

"You couldn't stand the smell of oil in the kitchen, so I came home the moment business let me go, to make you soup with my own hands."

"I painted the nursery myself. I built the furniture for our child with these hands."

"I've worked to be a good husband, a good father. I never imagined that in your eyes, none of it could weigh against a single necklace."

He pressed a hand over the wound, looking at me with disappointment.

"Francesca, I can give you so much love. I'd lay down my life for you and the baby without a second's thought."

"But I can't give you money. I won't have money mixed into what we have."

After that, he started a cold war with me.

Whatever I said, he behaved as though the words had never reached him.

Every night he claimed the Family's business kept him late, and he slept behind a separate door.

He even went out of his way to needle me, saying I loved him with my mouth while my heart only counted his money,

just waiting for me to back down, to explain, to apologize.

But with Adriana he grew closer and closer, sitting down to dinners with her, taking her to gallery openings, throwing tribute at her feet to keep her smiling.

Carmela tried to reason with me. She folded her hands and lowered her gaze first, the way she always did before relaying the will of the house.

"Ma'am, the young master is only sulking. He loves you so. The money may never touch your hands, but is a single dollar of it not spent on you and the baby?"

"If I were you, I'd hurry and apologize. Promise never to quarrel with him over money again."

I opened my mouth, but my chest was knotted tight with misery.

I asked myself,

"Francesca, is that necklace truly so important?"

I looked at the floor scattered with the toys he'd carved by hand, at the nursery he'd painted himself,

and for one moment, I truly wavered.

But it was right then that my father was diagnosed with kidney failure.

I set my pride aside and went to Lorenzo, and didn't even dare to call it anything but a loan, a debt I would repay.

Yet all he gave me back was disgust and disappointment.

"Francesca, how can you still be like this?"

In that moment, I finally understood.

What I cared about had never been that one necklace.

It was that Lorenzo's love was an exam I could never pass.

I poured out everything I had to prove my heart was true, and still he found me wanting;

yet Adriana had only to exist, and he'd already marked her perfect.

Now this was the third time I wanted out of the union.

This time, I was going through with it.

I waited for Lorenzo on the living room sofa the whole night.

From dark until first light, the study door stayed shut.

Through that one door, Adriana's laughter drifted out now and then, and Lorenzo's voice, deliberately lowered, coaxing, soothing.

I sat on the sofa, gripping the dissolution papers in my hand, and what had begun as fury slowly drained away, until in the end there was nothing left but numbness. My thumb found the thin gold band on my finger and turned it, once.