Emma
“What are you doing, Emma?” Affonso growled.
Emma turned around quickly, staring her husband right in the face. Affonso’s anger clouded his features as he looked around the hospital room.
“I … I …”
She couldn’t find the right words to say.
“Zio,” Calisto said.
Emma nearly flinched at the affection in Calisto’s tone.
Affonso moved past Emma, smiling widely. “Calisto, my boy.”
Calisto stood from the bed, balancing on his one good leg. Awkwardly, he one-arm hugged his uncle, and then sat back down on the bed.
“Where have you been?” Calisto asked.
“I was on vacation,” Affonso explained, chuckling.
Calisto nodded in Emma’s direction with a grin. “I think she wandered into the wrong room, zio. I don’t mind, look at her.”
Affonso’s smile faded away as he looked back at Emma. “She didn’t wander into the wrong room, actually.”
The confusion on Calisto’s handsome, bruised features was heartbreaking. He didn’t understand, and he was struggling to figure it all out.
“I don’t …” he started to say, trailing off quietly.
Affonso lifted his left hand, showcasing a wedding band that matched Emma’s feminine version. “She’s my wife, Cal.”
Calisto’s brow furrowed, and he stayed quiet.
Emma stood against the door and watched as Calisto’s world changed once again. Everything he thought he knew after waking up from his coma was different from what it actually was. She stayed silent as Affonso explained the two years of Calisto’s life that he had lost, and the things that had changed in that time.
Affonso left a lot out.
Like the things Calisto’s learned about Affonso’s attack on Camilla.
Calisto’s paternity.
His anger.
His resentment.
The pain he’d been in for two years.
Affonso said nothing of that, he didn’t even broach it. Calisto’s pain was still clear to see as he learned all over again that his mother had died, and she was buried in a grave at their family’s church.
Calisto asked about Emma, when the marriage had happened, but little else. Affonso explained the arrangement between the families, but he left out the lost pregnancies, and the friendship that had been gained between Calisto and Emma over the past year.
Just like that, Calisto looked past Emma.
Suddenly, she wasn’t important to him.
She was no longer a woman he loved and knew.
She was now the wife of his uncle.
A man he adored.
Emma was entirely off-limits.
Maybe she should have been before, but he had given her a chance, and that little bit of care had gone a hell of a long way.
But what could she say?
Calisto kept holding onto that poker chip, and the rosary. He rubbed the beads between his fingertips, and flicked the chip in his other hand.
Emma grabbed onto that.
Did the items feel important to him?
Somewhere inside, did he know?
It was hope for her.
But for the child in her body growing, she could have let Calisto go. They could have started over with no one any wiser, especially him. It could be the one chance for them both to survive their crazy, wrong love.
Their secrets would be safe.
All the lies they created together and the thin lines they walked would be unknown.
But she couldn’t do that.
So yeah, Emma watched him hold onto that chip and the rosary …
And God, she hoped.
Three months later …
Emma’s worry compounded hard in her chest as she called again for Midnight, and he didn’t come. She had just gotten home from an update appointment with her doctor.
She hadn’t needed to go to a lot of them since April.
In no time at all, Spring had melted into a warm Summer.
Emma watched the rain patter away until the sun was high and the days were long. As with the seasons changing, and the months passing her by, other things changed, too.
Calisto spent a month in the hospital. He did rehab and therapy. The rehab helped with his shattered shoulder and broken femur, while the therapy was supposed to help with his lost memories.
It didn’t.
He still looked at her like she was new to him.
He talked to her like she was just the wife of his uncle.
Affonso had Calisto moved into the Donati home the moment he was released from the hospital. Calisto was put into a room on the bottom floor, and was given a nurse who helped him daily.
Mostly, to her dismay, Calisto passed Emma by.
“Midnight!” Emma called.
Where had her little pup gone?
Three months hadn’t done much for Midnight’s small size. The black pup was still small enough to fit into one of her bags, and he could get lost in just about anything.
Emma couldn’t always take him with her, though.
The hospital wouldn’t allow him in, and as it was, she needed to sneak around Affonso to meet her appointments.
Today had been an important one.
She finally passed the twelve week mark.
Her first trimester was over.
The baby survived, the heart was beating, and the child was thriving.
The amniocentesis results had come back today as well. Emma now knew that the baby had no genetic disorders, and the gender was clear.
A boy.
She was having Calisto’s son.
But who could she tell?
“God, Midnight, where are you?” Emma asked herself, dropping her bag to the floor.
She searched the bottom level of the house, but the pup wasn’t in his kennel where she had left him. Sometimes, Affonso would let the puppy out to roam if he whined too much. But then her husband would bitch if the dog accidentally made a mess on the floor because no one let Midnight outside when he cried at the door.
Finally, Emma found her pup.
And Calisto.
Biting her lip, she leaned in the library entryway as Calisto played a simple tune on the piano with his one hand. He was sitting in his wheelchair, a device he proclaimed to hate on a daily basis. Unfortunately, he was required to use it during the daytime to prevent further injury to his femur. The doctors had apparently promised to let him begin using crutches in a week or two if X-rays came back looking well.
Little Midnight rested on the top of the baby grand. Curled into a tiny, furry ball, the pup slept as Calisto played a song that Emma didn’t recognize. When he came to the end of the piece, Midnight’s ears flicked as if he were praising the song in his sleep.
Emma couldn’t help but laugh.
Calisto quickly spun his wheelchair around to face her.
She sobered at the cold look on his face.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” she said quietly.
Calisto cocked a brow. “It’s not that—I don’t like to be spied on is all.”
“Sorry.”
He seemed to take note of the confusion and hurt on Emma’s features, and his own lips curved into a frown.
“Did I play for you before?” he asked.
Emma thought about that.
She thought about her head in his lap, and his fingers in her hair. She thought about her back on the piano, and her hands hitting the keys as he loved her in the best way. She remembered his private pain when he played, but how he loved it all the same.
Those weren’t the things she could say.
Calisto wasn’t that man right now.
“You did,” she settled on saying.
Calisto nodded. “Your dog was whining in his kennel when you were out. Affonso wasn’t happy about that, so I went and got him out.”
“Thanks, Cal.”
“Don’t mention it.” Calisto turned his chair around, and grabbed Midnight off the piano. Emma walked over and took him from his embrace. She hugged the dog to her chest, because he was just a little piece of her time with Calisto, and she always held him close. “Affonso said I gave you the dog.”
“It’s okay that you don’t remember,” she said quietly.
But it wasn’t.
Calisto scowled down at his hands. “I feel like I should, though.”
Emma had to hold back the tears. “Maybe you will again.”
“Hopefully. I don’t like this—it’s almost like I’m suspended in time, and the world is still spinning. It’s seen all kinds of things that I haven’t.” He caught sight of Emma’s frown, and laughed. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind hearing you talk.”
Calisto tipped his head to the side, smirking in that familiar way of his. Despite their situation, his grin still made her stomach clench with need.
“Is that so?” he asked quietly.
More than he knew.
This was the first real, decent conversation they had together since that night in the bathroom three months ago.
“Yeah,” Emma said, smiling. “I don’t mind.”
Calisto chuckled. “Maybe we’ll have to do it more often then.”
“Maybe we will, Cal.”
Emma pulled out another drawer in her vanity only to find her prenatal vitamins weren’t in there, either. She had been searching for them for an hour.
She always left them in the top drawer.
Hidden safely away.
Before she went to bed, she would break one into two and pop it back with a glass of water. It was a part of her nightly ritual.
Where had they gone?
Panic swelled in her throat, making her choke.
Emma put a hand over her flat stomach, instinctively wanting to protect the baby boy thriving within. Someone must have taken her vitamins—someone would know she was pregnant.
That’s all she could think about as she pulled out more drawers. Someone knew … someone found out her secret.
“Looking for something, Emma?”
Affonso’s question came from behind her. He had posed it in a calm, quiet way that belied the rage brimming in his gaze as she turned to face him. Standing straight, Emma’s stare dropped to the white and pink bottle of vitamins in his hand.
He shook them.
Teasingly.
Mocking her.
“Looking for these, perhaps?” he asked.
Emma swallowed audibly, struggling to come up with an appropriate excuse for why she had the vitamins in her vanity. “I’ve had them since—”
“Are you going to lie now? When I learned that you were sneaking off to see a doctor today, I went searching for a reason as to why you wouldn’t simply go to my doctor. Guess what I found?”
“Affonso … please give me my vitamins,” she whispered.
“And a grave, too?”
Emma straightened like someone had shoved a stake into her spine. Her mouth fell open, a string of pleads right on the tip of her tongue.
Affonso didn’t give her a chance to beg.
He was on her in a blink. Her scream was swallowed by the flash of his hand. That’s all she saw—just the flash of it before it hit her straight in the face.
Emma was knocked to the floor in a heap. She gasped, stunned as she held onto her throbbing cheek. Affonso stood over her, shaking that fucking bottle again.
“You’re pregnant,” he growled.
“Yes,” she breathed.
“Do not even think to lie and tell me that it’s mine. I am not that much of a fool, whore.”
Emma blinked, tears streaking down her cheeks as her face continued to pulse with pain. “It’s not yours.”
“When?”
“When you were gone.”
“Who?” he demanded.
Emma refused to answer.
Affonso reached down, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and pulled her up from the floor. Emma’s screech of pain died in her throat when she found herself thrown into a wall. Affonso was right on her, his hand closing around her throat as his face came dangerously close to hers.
Her husband bared his teeth, eyes wild.
“Who does the child belong to?” he asked.
“Stop, please,” she rasped.
Her air was gone with that one sentence.
Emma’s eyes, throat, and face burned.
She couldn’t catch a breath.
Affonso just kept squeezing like he didn’t give a single fuck.
“Please,” she begged soundlessly.
He squeezed harder.
“Is it someone I know?” he asked.
Emma shook her head.
Lie, lie, lie, her mind demanded.
“Is he Italian?”
Emma didn’t understand why that would matter.
So, that time, she nodded.
Affonso flashed his teeth in a sneer a second before he pulled her away from the wall, and then shoved her right back into it. Her head snapped off the wall, and she cried out in shock and pain. He allowed her to catch a breath, but his hand tightened to her throat again.
“Lying bitch,” he hissed. “If he is Italian, then I know him. I have brought no men into this home, into your life, that is not Italian. I would know—your enforcer would have told me—had you been running with someone while I was gone.”
“Affonso, s-stop … please stop,” Emma pleaded. “I-I can’t b-breathe.”
He chuckled coldly.
Her heart clenched.
Her baby.
She didn’t want to hurt her baby.
Emma’s vision swam the longer Affonso choked her. She struggled silently to figure out a way to save herself and her child.
Would the truth do it?
Would he let her live for the truth?
“Tell me who the father is so I can kill him,” Affonso said.
Emma swallowed convulsively
She knew he wouldn’t if he knew.
He adored Calisto.
He loved him.
Affonso would never hurt Calisto. He just got him back—the Calisto that didn’t know of Affonso’s awful deeds, and the secrets he hid. The Calisto that loved him like the father Affonso had always wanted to be for him.
“The baby is a boy,” Emma forced out.
Affonso’s hand briefly loosened just enough to let her get a gulp of stinging air. “Say that again?”
“A boy. The child is a boy. The results from my test came back today. That’s where I was. Genetics show it’s a boy.”
“A bastard,” Affonso snarled. “Someone’s boy born to a whore.”
“Calisto’s boy,” she breathed.
It was the last bit of air Emma had.
Affonso turned into a stone, and his hand pressed harder into her throat. “What did you just say?”
“The child—it’s Calisto’s baby, Affonso. His boy.”
Suddenly, Emma found herself on the floor with Affonso standing over her. She clutched at her throat, taking in deep breath after deep breath. Each one hurt a little more than the last.
“Liar,” Affonso whispered.
Emma blinked up at him, tears welling in her eyes and falling. “I’m not, Affonso. Calisto is the father. You can have the results of the amnio tested against the results of our child. The relation is there. He’s Calisto’s boy.”
Affonso roared at her, swiping his hand at her face again. Emma barely dodged the slap.
“Please don’t hurt me—don’t hurt this baby,” she cried.
Anything …
She would say anything to save her child.
He stopped.
Froze.
Pain filled Affonso’s features as he looked her over, and took a couple of steps backward.
“His baby,” Affonso murmured.
“His boy,” Emma corrected gently.
Affonso’s back hit the wall, and he shouted into his palms as he ran his hands over his face. Then, he went deadly quiet. Emma watched, wary and confused, and stood from the floor. Her knees hurt, and her throat burned.
But she was alive.
“The baby will die,” Affonso said harshly. “Like the last two have.”
Emma shook her head frantically. “No, no it won’t. They can monitor me. Put a stitch in my cervix, and the baby will be fine. They promise everything will be okay this time because they know. I can carry the child to term.”
Affonso quieted again, still scowling at her.
“He wouldn’t betray me like that,” Affonso mumbled. “Calisto wouldn’t do this to me, no matter how much he hated me.”
Emma didn’t know how to respond.
How could she?
The truth was right there.
“He wouldn’t,” Affonso repeated stronger, glaring at her.
“The Calisto downstairs might not betray you like that, but the one you hurt, the boy you lied to for years, did it with a fucking smile,” she said in a whisper.
Emma knew better than to taunt Affonso.
He was wild as it was.
Downright insane.
But she needed her moment. That one second to be defiant, to be strong.
Because he made her weak and useless.
Affonso shoved off the wall in a flash, coming at her again. Emma didn’t have time to move, and found herself barricaded to the wall once more. This time, he held her there with his hands on her arms.
He didn’t choke her.
He didn’t hurt her.
He wouldn’t.
Emma knew it.
“I just got him back,” Affonso growled at her. “My boy, I just got him back.”
He spat the words at her though clenched teeth.
Emma didn’t blink at his show of rage.
“He must never know, Emma. You cannot tell him about the child, or what he did.”
“It’s his baby,” she hissed.
“My child,” Affonso corrected. “It will be my goddamn boy—my child.”
Jesus Christ.
Emma wanted to refuse, but the hatred in Affonso’s gaze stopped her from saying anything.
“Deny me,” Affonso warned, “and I will kill you and the baby.”
Jesus Christ.
Emma sucked in a ragged breath, weighing her options that weren’t really options at all.
She remembered what Calisto had told her months ago.
It was one thing that stuck out in her memories.
Affonso would rather have a dead son than no son at all.
Affonso’s hand raised, and cracked into the wall directly beside Emma’s head.
She still didn’t flinch.
“Say it!” he shouted at her.
“I’ll never tell him about the child,” she promised.
“Or about you,” Affonso pressed.
“Or me.”
Her heart ripped in two, but she said it.
And she meant it.
Anything to save her child—Calisto’s child.
“What if Calisto’s memories come back on their own?” Emma dared to ask.
Affonso sneered. “If they haven’t starting trickling back to him yet, I don’t think they will. Obviously, he wants to rid himself of the past couple of years. Including his time with you, it seems.”
Emma let those words bounce off of her.
Affonso only meant to hurt her, after all.
“Still, if he does get some memories back, you are to lie and deflect at all costs,” Affonso added. “If you fail to do that, I will put you and the child in a grave together.”
“Yes, Affonso.”
When Affonso pushed away from her, and stalked from the walk-in closet, Emma held onto her little bit of hope.
She wouldn’t let it go no matter what Affonso said.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to tell Calisto anything at all. Maybe he would remember all on his own.