My Billionaire Husband Sent $500K. I Got $300. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four Rules

Dario feeds her, the doctor finds the heartbeat, and Callie sets four rules; then his men report her apartment torn apart and only their marriage certificate stolen.

Dario took me up thirty floors in a private elevator that had no buttons.

He did not say a word the whole ride.

The penthouse doors opened on a room with a wall of glass, and the whole Strip burned gold under it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the edge of a leather sofa that cost more than my last year of rent.

He picked up a phone and spoke to the kitchen in three short sentences.

A short while later a cart came in with steak, pasta, bread, soup and a bowl of strawberries.

"Eat."

"I'm not hungry," I lied.

My stomach growled loud enough to echo.

Dario closed his eyes for a second.

Then he cut the steak into small pieces himself and put the plate on my knees.

I ate with my head down.

I ate the bread, and the soup, and everything on the plate, and I was ashamed of how fast I did it.

He stood at the window with his back to me the whole time.

His shoulders were shaking.

"When did you last have a real meal?" he asked, without turning around.

"Tuesday."

"It is Friday."

"I know what day it is, Dario."

He turned then.

The red mark from my hand was still on his cheek, and his eyes were wet.

"I'm going to kill him," he said quietly.

"You can't kill him until I have my money back."

I did not know where that came from.

For the first time that night, the corner of his mouth moved.

The house doctor arrived at half past three, a tired gray man in a sweater with a bag in his hand.

He had me lie on the sofa and rolled the cold gel across my stomach.

Nobody spoke.

Then the room filled with a fast, wet, galloping sound.

I had heard it once before, alone, in a free clinic, with a nurse who was late for lunch.

Dario made a sound I had never heard from him.

"Again," he said.

The doctor moved the wand.

The galloping came back, strong.

"A hundred and fifty-two beats a minute," the doctor said. "Healthy. Mother is underweight and dehydrated. She needs rest and meals, not shifts."

Dario was kneeling beside the sofa.

I had not seen him move.

His hand hovered over my stomach and did not land.

I looked at his face, and I hated how much I wanted to touch it.

When the doctor left, I sat up and pulled my uniform straight.

"I have rules," I said.

"Say them."

"One. I get my own bedroom with a lock."

"Done."

"Two. You don't touch me until I say so."

His jaw worked. "Done."

"Three. I finish my shifts this week. I took that job with my own hands, and I'm not quitting it because a man finally noticed me."

"Callie, you are carrying my child."

"I am carrying our child, and I have been paying my own rent with it. Three."

He looked at the ceiling.

"Done," he said.

"Four. When I ask you something, you answer. All of it. No more silence and no more instructions from the other side of a door."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Four," he said. "Done."

I stood up to go and my knees went out from under me.

The room tilted.

His hand was under my elbow before I had finished falling.

It was a big hand, warm and steady, and it did not shake.

"Rule two," I said, and I could not make it sound like a threat.

"You were falling."

"I know."

He did not let go.

I did not pull away.

His fingers were wrapped around my arm just above the elbow, and I could feel his pulse beating hard against my skin.

It was only anger, I told myself.

He was angry at Lowell, and angry at himself, and that was all it was.

I stood there, tired and full and angry too, and did not say what I thought.

I thought: you smell exactly the same.

His phone buzzed on the glass table.

He let go of me to answer it, and I felt the cold of the missing hand.

"Corvino."

He listened.

His face went hard and still.

"When?" he said. "And what did they take?"

He listened again.

Then he looked at me, and I knew before he spoke.

"The men I sent to your apartment," he said. "Someone got there first."

"My things?"

"The place has been torn apart. Drawers out, mattress cut open, the floor pulled up in the closet."

My throat went dry.

"I have nothing worth stealing."

"They didn't take your television, or your jewelry, or the cash in the coffee tin."

He lowered the phone.

"They took one thing," he said. "Our marriage certificate."

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