Chapter 10: Her Own Child

I did not scream.

I sat down on the arm of the study sofa, because my legs had stopped working, and said, "Fabrizia Sarto."

"Yes."

"The woman at the table."

"Yes."

"The woman in the powder room."

"Yes."

I thought of her cardigan, her ginger candies, her white face.

I thought of her saying, You're early, aren't you?

"She gave me a piece of candy," I said, and then, to my own horror, I began to cry.

Orazio came and knelt in front of me.

He did not touch me until I put my hands on his shoulders.

"I won't lie to you about any of it," he said. "Not now, not later."

"Tell me."

"The page says the registry patient was told she received an anonymous donor embryo."

"Ettore has told the whole city it is his blood, and he knows it can't be."

"Why can't it?"

"Because twelve years ago, he learned he cannot father a child."

"The doctor who told him is on my payroll. Nobody else outside his family knows."

I stared at him.

"That's why the registry," I said.

"That's why the registry."

"So he's telling people her baby is his. When he knows he's lying."

"Yes."

"And he doesn't know it's mine."

"Not yet."

I wiped my face with both hands.

"I want to see her," I said.

"Tabby."

"I'm not going to say anything. I just want to look at her without a dinner table between us."

He rubbed a hand across his face.

"If Ettore ever learns whose it is, he will use it," he said. "On her, on you, on me."

"I know."

"Then I'll say yes, with one request." His eyes didn't leave mine.

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