Chapter 1 - The Impossible Pregnancy
I shoved the dinner plate away and covered my mouth.
"Please—get that away from me!"
Cassian Raldi lowered the document in his hand and stared at the untouched plate.
A hospital invoice was clipped beneath his thumb.
Someone had circled one number in black ink.
$9,000.
This wasn't just morning sickness.
The nausea struck so violently that I barely made it out of my chair.
My stomach twisted.
My eyes watered.
I pressed my palm over my lips while Marta, the sixty-year-old housekeeper who had worked for the Raldi family longer than Cassian had been alive, hurried to my side.
"Mrs. Raldi?"
"I'm fine."
I wasn't.
The scent of roasted garlic, butter, and steak had suddenly become unbearable.
Marta removed the plate while I tried to breathe.
Across from us, two members of Cassian's family had stopped speaking.
At my right, Cassian remained perfectly still.
That was always when he was most frightening.
Cassian Raldi didn't need to raise his voice.
Men who raised their voices wanted everyone to know they were dangerous.
Cassian had spent his adult life proving he didn't need to announce it.
He was thirty-three, tall, broad-shouldered, and unnervingly handsome, with pale blond hair, a sharp jaw, tattoos disappearing beneath the collar of a tailored gray suit, and eyes that seemed capable of measuring a person's lies before they even spoke.
I had been his wife for four months.
Not because I loved him.
Not because he loved me.
Because my father died owing $340,000 to people who did not forgive debts.
And because my mother's nursing home cost another $9,000 every month.
Cassian had offered me one solution.
Three years.
I would become Mrs. Cassian Raldi.
He would erase my father's debt, protect my mother, and cover every medical expense she needed.
At the end of three years, I would leave with no obligation to him.
There was one reason his family had accepted such a strange arrangement.
Children were impossible.
Six specialists had told Cassian the same thing after an illness in his twenties.
He was infertile.
Completely.
Permanently.
That fact had been written into our marriage contract in colder language than any wedding vow.
No heirs.
No custody disputes.
No expectations.
It had made me safe.
Or so I had thought.
Marta placed a glass of water in front of me.
"How long?"
I looked up.
"How long what?"
"Have smells been bothering you?"
Cassian's eyes shifted toward her.
I felt the room tighten.
"Marta," I said softly.
She ignored the warning in my voice.
"Have you been tired?"
I swallowed.
"A little."
"Headaches?"
"Sometimes."
Her expression changed.
Not dramatically.
That made it worse.
She looked down at me with the same face my mother had once worn when she understood something several seconds before I did.
"When was your last period?"
The water glass nearly slipped through my fingers.
Nobody moved.
Cassian folded his newspaper once.
Very slowly.
"Marta," he said.
She looked at him.
"You think she's pregnant."
It wasn't a question.
Marta hesitated.
"She should take a test."
Silence.
One of Cassian's cousins coughed nervously.
His aunt, Bianca Raldi, stopped cutting her food.
Cassian turned toward me.
His expression was unreadable.
"Is there something you need to tell me?"
"No."
"Think carefully."
"I don't need to think carefully."
His eyes hardened.
I pushed my chair farther from the table.
"I haven't done anything."
"I didn't say you had."
"You didn't have to."
Bianca leaned forward.
"Cassian—"
"Stay out of it."
She immediately leaned back.
That was the Raldi family.
Power had a seat at every table.
Cassian stood.
"So we'll settle this."
My pulse accelerated.
"How?"
"A doctor."
"Tonight?"
"Tonight."
Of course.
Ordinary people bought pregnancy tests at pharmacies.
Cassian Raldi summoned physicians to his mansion.
Thirty minutes later, Dr. Elias Moretti arrived carrying a black medical case.
He wasn't one of Cassian's six original specialists.
That mattered later.
At the time, I only cared about surviving the humiliation.
He took blood.
He asked questions.
He listened patiently while I insisted it was impossible.
Cassian stood near the window.
He barely spoke.
But I could feel him watching me.
When the doctor left to have the blood analyzed privately at a clinic Cassian controlled, I escaped upstairs.
I closed our bedroom door.
Then I cried.
Not because I believed I was pregnant.
Because I knew what everyone else would believe if I was.
Infertile husband.
Pregnant wife.
There were only so many explanations.
And none of them ended well for the wife of a mafia boss.
I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wedding ring I had never wanted.
Cassian entered without knocking.
I wiped my face.
He noticed.
He always noticed everything.
"I didn't cheat on you."
"I haven't accused you."
"Your face has."
"My face doesn't speak."
"Your family does enough speaking for you."
He closed the door.
For a long moment, neither of us said anything.
Then he asked something I hadn't expected.
"Are you afraid of me?"
I looked at him.
"Should I be?"
His jaw tightened.
"No."
I laughed once.
It wasn't funny.
"My father owed your organization more money than most people make in ten years. You walked into my apartment two weeks after his funeral and offered to make everything disappear if I married you. Now I might be pregnant even though every doctor says that's biologically impossible, and your relatives are downstairs deciding which man I slept with."
Cassian's expression changed slightly.
"They won't touch you."
"That's comforting."
"I mean it."
"And if the test is positive?"
He didn't answer immediately.
That frightened me more than an accusation would have.
Finally he said, "Then I find out the truth."
"What happens to me while you're finding it?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"You're my wife."
"Contractually."
His eyes narrowed.
"Still my wife."
Something in his voice made me stop.
During four months of marriage, Cassian had never pretended our arrangement was romantic.
We slept in the same suite because appearances mattered, but often in separate rooms.
He never demanded affection.
Never forced intimacy.
And on the handful of nights when the distance between us had disappeared, it had happened because I chose it too.
That was another reason the possibility of pregnancy terrified me.
Because if there was a child...
There was only one possible father.
Cassian.
I knew it.
But medicine said otherwise.
His phone rang.
Dr. Moretti.
Cassian answered.
"Yes?"
He listened.
His face gave nothing away.
Then his eyes moved to mine.
"You're certain?"
Another pause.
"Come back."
He ended the call.
My hands went cold.
"What?"
Cassian said nothing.
"Tell me."
"The test is positive."
The room seemed to tilt.
I grabbed the bedpost.
"No."
"You're pregnant."
"No."
"Approximately seven weeks."
I calculated backward without meaning to.
Seven weeks.
The night after my mother's emergency hospitalization.
The night Cassian had found me crying in the hospital chapel.
The night our marriage had stopped feeling like a contract for several hours.
I sat down.
Cassian stared at the floor.
"This doesn't make sense," he said.
"It makes perfect sense to me."
His gaze snapped toward me.
"You're saying it's mine."
"I'm saying there has been nobody else."
He studied my face.
"I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"If you're telling the truth, somebody lied to me."
That landed differently.
Not You betrayed me.
Somebody lied to me.
Cassian left the bedroom before I could ask what he meant.
Downstairs, the house erupted.
I heard voices through the staircase.
Bianca.
Cassian's uncle Renato.
Dr. Moretti.
Someone demanding a second test.
Someone using the word scandal.
Someone else saying DNA.
I stayed upstairs.
Then my phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I nearly ignored it.
The message contained no greeting.
No explanation.
Only a photograph.
I opened it.
It showed a medical report.
Cassian Raldi.
Eight years earlier.
At the bottom was a diagnosis.
Severe infertility.
But beneath it, handwritten in blue ink, were four words.
NOT PERMANENT. RETEST REQUIRED.
My heart stopped.
Another message appeared.
DON'T SHOW CASSIAN YET.
Then a third.
ASK WHO PAID THE SIX DOCTORS.
I stood slowly.
Footsteps approached the bedroom.
I expected Cassian.
Instead, the door handle turned.
Bianca Raldi walked inside.
She looked at the phone in my hand.
Then she looked directly at me.
Her face lost all color.
"Where did you get that?"
I backed away.
"You've seen this before."
May you like
Bianca closed the door behind her.
And quietly locked it.
