He Said Children Were a Mistake, So I Ran With His Baby novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Porch

The knock came at ten past six on a Tuesday morning, and it was not a delivery knock.

It was three slow, flat raps from someone who had been standing there a while.

Nonna was already at the bottom of the stairs in her robe, the rolling pin in her fist.

"Stay up there," she told me.

I did not stay up there.

I came down in my oldest cardigan, with my hand on the rail, and stopped on the third step from the bottom.

She opened the door.

Maxim stood on the porch in the gray before sunrise, in a dark coat and no tie.

His car was parked crooked on the street with the engine still ticking.

He hadn't slept in days, and it showed.

"Mrs. Bruni," he said. "I'm sorry for the hour. I need to see Elena."

"You need a lot of things," Nonna said.

Then he looked past her, and saw me.

His eyes went to my face first, then lower.

My cardigan wasn't wide enough to hide anything.

I watched him see it.

Every muscle in his face stopped moving.

"Elena," he said.

It was barely a voice at all.

"How did you find me?"

"I hired a man after the dinner." He still hadn't taken his eyes off my stomach. "It took him three weeks. You never used your own name for anything."

"That was the idea."

"Is it..."

He didn't finish.

His hand had come up in front of him and it was shaking.

I had watched that hand sign a four-billion-dollar merger without a flicker.

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