Traded to His Enemy, Pregnant With His Heir novel · Chapter 9 of 48

Chapter 9: Ask Her

For a second the whole lobby was quiet except for the revolving door turning behind me.

Then Gianluca laughed.

It was a short, shocked, happy laugh, and it made me sick.

"A baby." He shook the insurance paper at me. "You were going to tell me. That's what you were trying to say. At the warehouse."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say it?"

"You said not now."

That landed.

I watched it land.

His face went grey under the tan for one second, and then he pulled it back together, the way he always did in front of his men.

"Okay. Okay. That changes everything." He tossed the roses onto the doormen's desk like they were a coat. "You're coming home today. My son is not growing up in a Russian's apartment."

"It's not your son."

His eyes went hard.

"Excuse me?"

"It's my child. You traded it away on a warehouse floor. You just didn't read the receipt."

"Watch your mouth."

"You signed the annulment, Gianluca. We were never married. You said so yourself. So whose name do you think this baby gets?"

He reached into his coat again and pulled out a thick fold of paper.

I knew it by the little yellow flags still sticking out of the pages.

"My lawyer never filed," he said. "I told him to sit on it."

He tore the pages in half.

Then in half again.

He let the pieces fall on the marble floor between us.

"There," he said. "You're my wife. You've always been my wife. Now get in the car."

I looked at the paper on the floor.

My signature was on one of the pieces, upside down.

"I'll sign new ones," I said. "I'll sign them every morning for the rest of my life if I have to. This child will never carry your name."

"It's a Bellucci."

"It's mine."

The elevator dinged.

Everybody in the lobby turned.

Ilya stepped out.

He was in his shirtsleeves, no jacket, no tie.

He didn't hurry.

He walked across the lobby and stopped beside me, a little behind my shoulder.

He looked down at the torn paper, and at the roses on the desk, and at the insurance statement in Gianluca's hand.

Then he looked at Gianluca.

"She's not yours, Lazarev," Gianluca said. "Your thirty days are done. My debt's my business. She comes home with me."

"Ask her," Ilya said.

"I don't need to ask my own wife..."

"You didn't ask her at the warehouse either," Ilya said. "Ask her now. In front of these men. I'll stand right here, and whatever she says, I'll do."

Gianluca stared at him.

Then he turned to me, and his voice changed.

It went soft.

It was the voice from the trauma bay at three in the morning, laughing through fourteen stitches.

"Shona. Come home. Please. I made a mistake. Let me fix it."

Four years ago that voice would have walked me off a roof.

I took the brass key out of my coat pocket and closed my hand around it.

"No," I said.

I turned around and walked into the elevator.

Ilya walked in after me.

The doors started to close.

Gianluca's voice came through the gap, not soft at all anymore.

"That's a Bellucci in there! You hear me, Lazarev? That's mine!"

The doors shut.

The elevator rose.

Ilya stood beside me looking straight ahead at the brushed steel.

He didn't touch me.

"The scan," he said.

"The bleed's gone. The baby's doing laps." I swallowed. "She cleared me for anything."

He didn't say anything.

But I saw his hand close into a fist at his side and open again.

"I was going to come back," I said. "Before he was there. I decided on the expressway."

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