Page 9 of Banished and Pregnant by Her Sicilian Billionaire Husband

And now she’s asking me about custody arrangements for the tooth fairy, as though that’s a normal thing for a seven-year-old to have to think about.

“It counts as everybody’s turn, baby.”

“Because Papa said a dollar and you said fifty cents.”

“Your father says a lot of things.”

“You could ask him yourself,” Rica says, not looking up from her book. “You could come in with us this time. Just once?”

And that’s the tooth, gone, all the way through my ribs.

“Eat your apple slices, Rica.”

“That’s what you always say when you don’t want to talk about him.”

“Then it’s working extremely well, isn’t it?”

It’s a cold, bright October morning, but we’re parked where we always park. The lot behind the conservatory, with that glass roof throwing sunlight at us in long slices.

Neutral ground.

That’s the phrase Mr. Brent used eight years ago, and it still hurts even now. Just thinking about it makes my chest squeeze. How did we end up like we’re two parts of Korea instead of two halves of a marriage? How did we—

Enough, Chisa!

I think it’s time I distract myself with mommy duties, like making sure Rica has everything she needs. “Baby? Did you put socks in?”

“Papa has socks at his house.”

“That’s not—” I stop, because I can hear how the rest of that sentence sounds, and I refuse to be that woman in front of my own child. “That’s true. He does.”

Then his car comes down the ramp, and my whole body forgets eight years of practice.

It’s the same as it ever was. The black car. The driver who never gets out.

Then the door opens, and Marcello Bastianelli unfolds from the back of it into the October sun.

My heart does what it always does, which is behave like something that has learned nothing at all in eight years.

He’s thirty-six now, but the years have done nothing to him except make him worse.

Six foot four in a black wool coat. Dark hair going silver at one temple, cut shorter than he used to wear it. That mouth. That face that used to make waiters drop things, harder now, every bit of the softness gone out of it.

It should look like damage. It should look like a warning. Instead it just looks like a man who got more beautiful while I wasn’t allowed to watch.

Two women coming out of the glasshouse slow right down when they see him. One of them says something to the other. They both look back.

And just like that, my chest is aching again. Eight years ago, seeing this could have made me feel jealous. Insecure. Now, well...

The sad part is that I still feel all those things. The only difference is that this time, I no longer have a right to such feelings. Not when the man I married can no longer bear the sight of—

Oh no, here we go again.

Rica’s excitement has gotten the better of her once more, and she’s out of the car before I’ve got my seatbelt off.

“PAPA!”

And this is what opens me up, every third Saturday, like a tin.