Traded to His Enemy, Pregnant With His Heir novel · Chapter 3 of 48

Chapter 3: Sign the Papers

Galina claims her, quiet gifts appear, and on day ten Gianluca calls with a woman in his bed and annulment papers to sign; Shona signs, and then the bleeding starts.

I didn't cry over the photo.

I made it to the bathroom and threw up, which was more honest.

Then I blocked the number and went back to bed.

By the second morning, the housekeeper had decided I belonged to her.

Her name was Galina.

She was sixty-one, with a grey braid down to her waist and eyes that missed nothing.

She put a bowl of buckwheat with butter in front of me and stood over it with her arms crossed.

"Eat. All. For the baby."

My spoon stopped halfway.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody tells Galina anything. Galina has eyes." She tapped one. "You smell toast, you run. Very loud running."

I ate all of it.

She fed me every three hours after that.

There were saltines on my nightstand when I woke up and a ginger ale I never asked for.

On the fourth day I fell apart in the laundry room over a stack of Lazarev's towels.

She didn't ask me one question.

She took the towel out of my hands and folded it, and then the next one, and hummed something low in Russian until I stopped.

It was the first time in three years that someone stayed in the room while I came apart.

I hardly saw Lazarev.

He was gone before it got light and home after I'd gone to bed.

But things kept turning up.

On day three there was a bottle of prenatal vitamins on my breakfast tray.

It was the exact brand I'd have picked off the shelf myself.

On day four there was a stack of emergency medicine journals on the library table, the new issues, still in plastic.

On day five I'd crossed the marble hall barefoot at midnight, and in the morning there were sheepskin slippers outside my door, in my size.

I never caught him leaving any of it.

On the sixth night I found him in the kitchen at one in the morning, standing at the counter with black coffee and a laptop full of numbers.

"Thank you," I said. "For the slippers."

He didn't look up from the screen.

"Galina's idea."

"Galina says they were yours."

He scrolled.

"Galina is an old woman with too much free time."

From somewhere down the dark hall a voice called out, "Galina has ears like a bat and a wooden spoon."

He shut his eyes.

For one second the most feared man in Boston looked like a teenage boy caught out by his mother.

I laughed.

I hadn't laughed in so long that it scared both of us.

He looked up then, all the way up, and something warm moved behind his eyes.

Then he looked back down at his numbers, and I went to bed and told myself my heart was going fast because of the hormones.

On day seven the photos went up.

The Globe's society page had them from a charity auction at the Four Seasons.

Gianluca in a tux with his palm low on Donatella's back.

Donatella with her cheek against his shoulder, in pale pink.

The caption called her "Gianluca Bellucci's first love, home at last."

Not one line in it said he had a wife.

Not one person in the comments wondered where I was.

On day ten my phone rang.

I was at the big window, watching a tanker come in past the airport.

His name came up on the screen and my whole body betrayed me.

My heart kicked. My hand went straight to my stomach.

I thought, he's coming. He's sorry. I'll tell him about the baby, and he'll come up those forty-one floors and get me.

"Shona." Short. Like he was calling a vendor. "I need something from you."

"Gianluca, I have to tell you something important."

"My lawyer messengered papers to Lazarev's office this morning. It's an annulment. Sign it today."

The floor tipped under me.

"A what?"

"It's a move. You're my wife, so you're worth something to him. He can raise the price every week. If we were never married, you're nothing to him, and he lets you go sooner. I'm doing this for you."

Nothing to him.

He said it like a weather report.

"And then?" I said. "When I'm out. Do we get married again?"

He didn't answer.

Behind him, close, a woman's voice came out soft and slow with sleep.

"Gian? Come back to bed, I'm freezing."

He covered the phone.

Not fast enough.

"I have to go," he said. "Just sign them. Trust me on this."

The line went dead.

Trust me on this.

I stood at the window until the tanker was out of sight.

Then I walked down the hall to Lazarev's office.

A thick cream envelope sat on his desk with the Bellucci lawyer's seal on the flap.

Lazarev was there, behind the desk, in his shirtsleeves.

He looked at my face, and then he slid a pen across to me and didn't say a word.

I signed every page where the little yellow flags were.

Shona Bellucci, born Flanagan, consents to a declaration that no valid marriage existed between...

My hand never shook.

"Shona," he said quietly. "Leave it till morning."

"No. Now."

I went back to my room.

I turned my key in the lock.

I lay down on top of the covers and curled up around my stomach, and I finally let myself cry the way I hadn't on the warehouse floor.

Something pulled low in my belly.

A deep, sharp twist.

Then another one, harder.

I pushed up on one elbow.

The sheet under me was red.

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