Chapter 12: Five Months

By the time I was five months pregnant, Dario Sabatini had been kneeling at the Orsini gate for an hour.

I watched him from the library window with a cup of tea, one hand on my stomach.

The guards had told him to leave twice.

He had told them he would wait.

It was raining a little, and the gravel had gone dark under his knees.

He wore no coat.

He had lost weight since the Commission, and there was a split in his lip that had never quite healed.

Federico had told me three weeks ago that Ruggeri had taken Dario's crew away and given it to a cousin.

The Sabatini name had stopped opening doors at the docks.

Valentina had moved back to her father's house in a week.

She was still Dario's wife in the Family book.

That was all anyone said about her anymore.

"You don't have to go out," Paola said from the sofa.

"I know."

"He'll catch pneumonia."

"He can get it on his own time."

I put down the cup and walked out through the hall.

The household watched me go.

I knew every board in that house by now that creaked.

I did not hurry.

The front door opened onto wet air and the smell of cut grass.

I crossed the gravel to the gate and stopped on my side of the bars.

Dario looked up.

His eyes went to my face, and then, slowly, to the curve under my sweater.

His mouth opened.

"You're..."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Betrayed at the Altar, I Married a Powerful Rival from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.