The Mob Boss's Forgotten Wife: Pregnant and Abandoned. novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: Two Proofs
The doctor gave me the news with a grin from ear to ear.
"Ten weeks, Mrs. Henao. Congratulations."
I stared at the blurry image on the screen, the little speck with a heartbeat.
Ten years of marriage.
Ten years of waiting.
I brought a hand to my mouth and cried silently.
Leaving the office, the ultrasound envelope pressed against my chest, I wanted to call Lázaro and tell him before anyone else.
Then I saw Lorenza.
She was sitting in the clinic waiting room, her purse in her lap and one hand on her belly.
Lorenza Echeverri, my husband's childhood friend.
The one who grew up with him in the port neighborhood, the one who called him "Lazarito" under her breath when she thought I couldn't hear.
She smiled when she saw me.
It was a sweet smile, with big eyes, one that had always seemed a little too perfect to me.
"Soraya. What a coincidence."
"Are you sick?"
"Pregnant," she said, and let out a little laugh. "Five months. I found out late. My parents don't know yet."
I felt the floor shift.
"Whose is it?"
She looked at me with wet eyes.
"I'll tell Lázaro first, if you don't mind."
I left her there.
I went out the back door of the clinic and sat in the car for a while without starting the engine.
That night there was a dinner for the bosses at the hacienda El Mirador, and I was supposed to sit at the head of the table to my husband's right.
I put on a dark green dress.
I tucked the ultrasound into my purse.
I planned to tell him at dinner, in front of everyone, with a glass in my hand.
I was happy in a ridiculous way.
The table was long, mahogany, with twenty men in suits and their wives.
Cigar smoke floated under the ceiling.
Lázaro sat at the head, his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, with that face that rarely smiled.
I sat to his right.
Lorenza, to his left, in the place of honor she had never occupied before.
No one said anything.
When dessert was served, Lázaro stood up and tapped his glass with a spoon.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I have an announcement."
Silence fell.
I straightened in my chair, my hand already in my purse.
"Lorenza is carrying my child."
It wasn't a thunderclap.
It was something smaller and harder, like the slam of a door closing far away.
The bosses applauded.
Someone whistled.
One of the wives looked at me with a pitying expression too quick to be feigned.
Lorenza lowered her eyes, demure, and brought a hand to her mouth.
I stayed still.
With my hand inside my purse, on top of the ultrasound envelope.
That night, in our room, I waited until the door closed.
Lázaro took off his watch, set it on the dresser, and started unbuttoning his shirt, like any other night.
"Don't look at me like that."
"How am I looking at you?"
"Like I betrayed you."
"And you didn't?"
He sighed.
He sat on the edge of the bed, facing me.
"Soraya, let me explain."
"Explain."
"Her parents didn't want that child."
"And the father?"
"It doesn't matter who he is. They found out she's pregnant and gave her an ultimatum: either she gets a cleanup or they kick her out of the house. She came to me last night, crying." He ran a hand over his face. "I can't leave her alone. She's been my friend since we were six."
"And that's why you said it was yours."
"No one touches one of my children. No one dares. Claiming her baby as mine is the only way to protect them both."
He said it with the calm of a man who had done the math.
I pulled the ultrasound out of my purse.
I placed it on the bed, between us.
He looked at it.
He looked at it for a long time.
"Ten weeks," I said. "Today, at eleven in the morning."
He went white.
"Soraya..."
"I was going to tell you at dinner."
"Soraya, it's..."
"What are you going to do about mine?"
He swallowed.
"I'll claim it. When hers is born. In four months, Lorenza's child will be safe, and then I'll speak. I promise you."
"Why not both now?"
"Because if I say I have two children by different women four months apart, her parents will suspect hers isn't mine."
"And it isn't yours."
He fell silent.
"It isn't yours," I repeated. "And I have to wait."
"It's not waiting. It's protecting."
"Who?"
"Both of them."
I looked at him.
He was my husband.
I had loved him at twenty, at a neighborhood party, when he was a skinny boy who lent me his jacket in the rain.
I had loved him on every birthday, on every trip, every time he came back wounded, and every night he fell asleep with his head in my lap.
I waited to feel anger.
I waited for some sharp pain.
Nothing came.
Only a white, clean emptiness, like a freshly painted room.
My love had died somewhere between the glass and the announcement.
And I hadn't even heard the sound.
"It's fine," I said.
"It's fine?"
"Let it be as you say."
He stood up, relieved, and took my face in his hands.
He kissed my forehead.
I let him.
When he fell asleep, I got up without making a sound.
I opened the safe in the dressing room with the combination he himself had taught me.
I took out my passport.
My savings account book, the one in my name from before we got married.
An envelope with cash.
I put it all in my travel bag.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand.
It was my mother.
At three in the morning.
I answered in a low voice, in the bathroom, with the door closed.
"Soraya." Her voice was broken. "Mija, come to the house. Your father found out through the doctor, who's his compadre."
"About what?"
"That you're pregnant. And that your husband just told the whole city that the child is the other woman's."
"Mom..."
"Everyone thinks yours is from another man."
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