I listened to his smooth lies, as if today’s mess was only because I had been late, as if he and Maya had been the ones fighting for Phillips’s.
“It’s true, I was blind.” I turned to the other man in the wager, whose amused face suddenly froze.
I spoke quietly, “Mr. Landers, we accept the loss. Let’s carry out the real bet now.”
With Carlos’s shocked eyes on me, I dragged Maya over and forced her to the ground.
“Hannah! She’s pregnant!”
His large hands pressed down on my shoulders. I paused before pressing my fist against my stomach.
I smiled at Carlo. “Do you want my unborn child, or hers?”
The weight on my shoulders eased as he let go, his hands falling away while he stepped aside with a blank face. I pressed harder until a dull ache spread through my belly, then rose slowly to my feet.
I tore a few sheets of paper from the table, wiped the blood from my hands and threw them at Carlos with disgust. “Will you write the divorce papers, or should I?”
Carlos’s eyes flickered at last. “I won’t divorce you, Hannah. I told you, only death will end us.”
The moment those words left him, I picked up a knife from the floor and swung it at him.
He looked at the blade without moving, his gaze the same as when he was eighteen, surrounded by men, fearlessly lighting gasoline.
The blade cut across his body and blood instantly soaked his custom suit.
He pulled the knife from my hand without any change in his expression and tossed it aside. “Hannah, one life is enough to ease your anger.”
Maya’s lower body was soaked in blood and the child was gone. I watched Carlos carry her away and said silently, “Carlos, it wasn’t just one, it was two.”
I stayed in the hospital for seven days and during that time, Carlos and Maya vanished from my world.
It was then that I reached out for the first time to the person I had least wanted to see.
“I want you to put people around Carlos.”
On the first night after I was discharged, I was packing for the funeral the next day when Carlos suddenly pushed the door open.
He stopped in his tracks when he saw me holding a book. Since I became pregnant, he had bought piles of books and read to our child every day, only because my Greenville University acceptance letter had burned in the fire.
He said this child would one day make up for my regret.