As expected, Dante gave me a troubled smile, trying to reassure me. "Sweetheart, this can't wait. There's a sit-down I need to be at. You know how it is."
"I'll call your mother. Rosa can come over and stay with you, okay?"
A wave of nausea washed over me, goosebumps prickling my skin. He invoked my mother's name so easily. As if she were a consolation prize. As if her presence could fill the space he kept hollowing out. Still, I managed to force out the words, "Drive safely."
I lay there in silence, watching him get dressed. He pulled on a dark jacket, checked his reflection once, ran his thumb along his jaw again. Then he left. The front door closed. The engine turned over. The crunch of tires on the driveway, and then nothing.
Slowly, I got up, holding my belly, and made my way downstairs. I called for a car. Not one of the Family's drivers. A taxi. An ordinary taxi, because what I was about to do required no witnesses who reported back to the Moretti household.
"Maplewood Estates," I told the driver.
He sped through the streets, past the shuttered storefronts and the restaurants the Family owned, past the social club on Mulberry where the old men played cards and pretended they didn't know what happened in the back room. Just as we arrived at the gated entrance of Maplewood, I saw Dante's car pull in ahead of us. My stomach clenched. I asked the driver to park behind a row of trees, where the streetlight didn't reach.
From the back seat, I watched as Cara fluttered into Dante's arms like a butterfly.
He caught her gently, placing a hand on her flat stomach. His face softened with a look of tender reproach, and he playfully tapped her nose. The gesture was so intimate, so practiced, that it told me everything about how many times they'd done this. How many nights he'd come here after telling me it was Family business. How many mornings he'd returned smelling of jasmine and called it work.
Cradling my belly with one hand, I took out my phone and switched to video mode. With trembling fingers, I watched through the screen as Dante lifted Cara into the passenger seat and carefully buckled her seatbelt. The way he moved around her. Protective. Attentive. Like she was something precious.
My eyes burned, but I blinked back the tears.
"Driver, follow that car," I said.