Page 66 of Brutal Vows

What happened to the baby?

This is why she’s so broken. And I feel my body break along the same lines on hers, curling into myself, unable to fathom the heartache.

“Milana—” I start, my voice filled with emotion too intense to stomach.

My wife is just lying there, limp, tears streaming from her eyes down her temples, hardly breathing, holding her agony in check. How long has she been carrying this—alone? Nobody mentioned anything about a baby.

“Oh, fuck, Mila,” I murmur as I close in on her and pull her into my arms. I cup her head to hold her close as sobs rake through her. “What happened? Was it stillborn?”

Like Gabi was supposed to be, tearing our mom from us? Just gone. We might have reunited with our sister, but her ‘stillbirth’ left a cut so deep it will never heal.

Milana just cries and I hold her, but then she cups my cheek and makes me look at her, into her tear-drenched eyes.

“I don’t talk about her. I don’t think about her. Only three people know she exists.” She stops. Swallows. “She wasn’t stillborn.”

What was cold before seems to freeze with dread. “Did they take her from you?”

“No, but I left her behind.” Her voice breaks. “In Russia.”

“What?” I lean back to stare at her in horror. “What the fuck? Why? What woman leaves her baby behind?”

As soon as the words are out, I regret them. She pushes out of my hold and sits up, hugging her knees, a wall between us.

I’ve fucked up. I clamber off the bed and reach for my jeans. I don’t bother with briefs. This night has taken a turn I didn’t expect. This is fucking crazy.

“What woman? A woman who doesn’t want anybody to know her baby exists,” she chokes out. “But you’re right. Who has it in her to leave a baby behind—one she desperately wanted? It broke me, but I did it and it worked. Nobody would believe I had it in me to do this…and me having had a baby? It can’t possibly be true.”

For a long moment, she holds my gaze, challenging me, and I’m the first to look away. I know nothing of what led her to make this decision. I can’t even begin to understand.

I pull on my T-shirt, and when I look at her again, she’s rested her forehead on her arms, her body racked with sobs.

“I’m sorry, Milana.”

Fucking idiot. She starts to talk and I do this. I rub at my forehead as I find her cashmere sweater. She’s going to get cold what with the shock of this revelation between us. Only three people know?

“Here, princess,” I murmur, battling my own emotions as I softly coax her to unfurl so I can help dress her. She doesn’t flinch or push me away. Thank God. “It’s okay…it’s okay,” I try to soothe her as I pull the sweater over her head. “But you’re going to tell me everything. No more secrets between us.”

She bites her lip and sobs as I guide her arms into the sleeves. “I can’t, Luca, please.”

“Why?” I ask as I gather her hair and pull it from the sweater’s neck. It falls over her shoulders, and like this, with the tears in her eyes, she looks so freaking vulnerable. The few women who know about me, about my fucked-up existence, flash through my mind’s eye. Women who made impossible choices. Women who will make impossible decisions because of men.

Mom, for one, is still as vivid in my mind as she was over twenty years ago. She was probably as petrified as Milana is now—constantly.

Now there’s Tasha, initially so scared of Matteo she jumped off a cliff in Sicily. Gigi, running for her life from what Franco Fiore planned for her. Ariana suffering so badly from PTSD that she’d cry quietly, thinking nobody would notice, but Dominic noticed everything. And then there’s Gabi, shot and in hospital, hunted by some Russian maniac.

Not this woman too. Not my wife. And not her baby, a pure innocent. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know who to trust.”

Her words are a gut punch, but I get it. With this level of secrecy, there’s something seriously messed-up going on. I’m a fucking living secret. Gabi was one too. Now here is Milana, with a secret baby.

“Try and trust me?” I say softly, not knowing if I’ve earned it, especially with my earlier comment, but her secret is out now. With us living like this, it was just a matter of time.

She nods and wipes at her cheeks.

I reach for the tissues on the nightstand and hand one to her, my mind flooding with questions but not wanting to jump to conclusions because I already know I’m not going to like this. I don’t need to embellish it with my own assumptions or fuck it up by saying the wrong thing again.

It’s quiet for a long time as she seems to arrange her thoughts, and when she eventually looks up, there’s a different light in her eyes. She’s weighed her options. Strategized. Adjusted to my earlier reaction, maybe anticipating my next move. Some men would resort to violence in moments like these, but I’ve been around enough shit like this in my life to have control over my reactions.