My Husband Bet on Who Fathered My Baby, Then Begged Me to Forgive Him

Start Reading

Wallace Baxter, who in all our years bound by the blood-alliance had never once agreed to give me a child, suddenly turned ravenous. Three nights in a row, no caution, nothing held back.

I thought he'd finally accepted me into the famiglia, into himself. Cheeks burning, the little test stick clutched in my hand, I went to bring him the good news. Instead I found him in the private lounge off the club floor, laughing low with the ward they'd all raised and his two brothers.

"You two spoil me. I was only curious whose baby it would turn out to be, and the three of you went and treated Dora Pruitt like she's not even a person. If she ever found out her child's father was a mystery, do you think she'd be angry?"

My husband, Wallace, gave a contemptuous snort. "Angry? It was a gift. You have no idea how happy she was when she heard she could finally have a baby."

"But seriously, big brother. Dora's built for it."

"Only you, Wallace, would be generous enough to share."

"Then let's make it a wager. See who hits the jackpot. Whoever loses buys Ivy Fox jewelry at the charity den. Nothing under ten million, capisce?"

It was a matter of male pride, the kind that runs the rackets, so all three kept raising their own stakes.

Ivy watched them argue until their ears went red, delighted by the whole thing, and through the slats of the blinds she let her gaze drift lazily across me. Her head tilted, her smile softening into something almost sad.

...

"Big brother, what if Dora finds out the kid isn't yours and the whole thing comes apart?"

Wallace gave a cold, scornful laugh, a half-second too soon, then cut his eyes sideways for an approval no one offered. "Carrying another man's seed in her belly? Any way you slice it, she's the slut. Cheated and got knocked up for it. Even if Dora knew, would she have the nerve to breathe a word of it?"

"Besides, you really think I'd leave myself exposed?"

He pulled a stack of photographs from his pocket and scattered them across the table like a man dealing a marked hand.

"Damn, you didn't even cover her face. Anyone sees these, and there goes the wife's good name. Ha, ha, ha."

"Looks like one of those magazines they smuggle in from overseas. Even on paper she looks filthy."

Ivy picked one up too, glanced at it with distaste, and tossed it aside. The softness was already gone from her face, snapped off like a switch, leaving the cold eyes that had been underneath all along.

The photo slid clean through the gap beneath the door and landed right in front of me.

I could barely breathe. I dropped to the floor, snatching up my dignity, my whole self, and shoved it deep into my sleeve.

The tears wouldn't stop.

Wallace had been forced into this union by the old Don's command, two bloodlines sealed over my head, and in all our years he had hardly ever touched me.

I thought I'd finally won him over. So even knowing there was something in the wine, I drank it down obediently, and let my own clear mind be peeled away, thread by thread.

For the sake of a child, to please him, those three nights I threw away every shred of pride to meet him, to answer him.

I never even knew when the man had changed, or when the photographs were taken.

All of it, because of one sentence from Ivy, the little ward they cradled in their palms.

I ran out of the club like I was running for my life. My clothes covered every inch of me, and still it felt like every pair of eyes along the way, every soldier at every door, was looking at the naked woman in those photographs.

The shame was so vast it nearly crushed me.

I ran with my head down, and those few minutes of road felt like a century.

Home at last, inside the walls of the Baxter estate, I rushed to the shredder and fed the photographs through, again and again.

I wanted to feed the filthy version of myself in there too, and shred it gone.

A door slammed so hard I flinched. When I came to myself, it was Wallace.

"Has your bleeding come this month?"

For a second it didn't register.

"Wh... what?"

He tipped up the corner of his mouth in a soft laugh, almost flirtatious.

"Little puff pastry, that was three full nights. I have a great deal of faith in my abilities. Come down. I'm taking you to the doctor for a look."

And with that Wallace seized my hand and pulled me straight toward the garage. My thumb turned the wedding band around my finger, once, twice, the way it always did when something frightened me.

When he saw me sitting frozen in the passenger seat, he sighed and reached over to draw the seatbelt across me.

I caught his hand and turned it over in mine. The words came out before I could stop them.

"To check if I'm pregnant? Wallace, do you really want to have a child with me?"

He smoothed my hair back, his eyes so tender they looked wet.

"What a silly thing to say. Of course I do. A girl who takes after you, a boy who takes after me. Wouldn't that be perfect?"

He played it so well. A man bred to lie since the cradle, raised in a house where every word was a knife wrapped in silk. If I hadn't heard them laughing in that backroom, I would have believed every word.

By the time the car rolled through the gates of the private clinic the Baxter Family kept on retainer, Wallace's two brothers and Ivy were already waiting in the corridor.

They looked me over, none of it friendly.

The two men raked their eyes over me, slick and possessive, the way made men sized up a thing they'd already decided was theirs to use. My skin crawled.

Wallace pulled me behind him. "Word is you might be pregnant. They came to congratulate you."

The blood test was quick. The result matched the one I'd run myself. I was pregnant.

Wallace held the report. I couldn't read his face, but Ivy's sour mood was plain to anyone with eyes.

He looked up at the doctor. "Can we do a paternity test now?"

The doctor glanced between Wallace and me, more than once. He knew whose money kept his lights on, and the knowledge made him careful. "She's only three weeks along. We can, but generally we don't recommend"

He cut in, low and flat. "Then do it. Now."

The doctor rushed to add, "At this stage the only option is amniocentesis. It's hard on both the mother and the fetus, and we can't use anesthesia. The woman will be in a great deal of pain. Sir, you may want to reconsider."

His brow creased, impatience surfacing.

"No anesthesia, then no anesthesia. Are you having trouble understanding me?"

The temperature in that white corridor seemed to drop. The doctor turned back to me without another word of argument.

I gave a bitter smile. "Do it."

A paternity test takes a week. They couldn't wait to see the results, and any later would cut into Ivy's night at the wager house. Whether or not it hurt me wasn't their concern.

Out in the open, in front of the nurses and the soldiers loitering by the doors, people had started murmuring, glancing.

After the doctor collected the hair samples, Wallace dropped another stone into the water. "Take samples from my two brothers as well. Test all of them together."

The murmuring caught fire.

"What's going on? This woman gets around that much? Three men?"

"Why else would a man bring his newly pregnant wife in for a paternity test? He doesn't even know if the kid's his!"

"Husband's tall and good-looking and she still cheats. Ungrateful. If I were her husband I'd beat her to death!"

The doctor, who'd shown me pity a moment ago, decided he'd been played too. There was no anesthesia to begin with, and now his hand was heavier. Pain tore through my belly until my vision went black and tears slid down from the corners of my eyes. My thumb found my wedding band and turned it, around and around, the only thing in that room I could hold onto.

I came out bracing myself against the wall, and Wallace strode forward to take me in his arms.

Then Ivy ran off, eyes red.

Wallace's two brothers hurried after her.

The arm that had just closed around me went rigid, and he let go. I dropped to the floor.

"Go home on your own first. I need to check on Ivy."

He turned and ran toward where she'd gone.

Look at that. When he goes to her, he runs.

The onlookers saw the state of me and savored it.

"A bus anyone can ride. No wonder her husband ran off with someone else!"

"Hey, gorgeous, give me your number. How much for a night? I can definitely afford you."

"She charges? Free! One call and she'll be flat on your bed in a heartbeat!"

I clung to the railing and pulled myself up slowly, head down, eyes fixed on my own toes as I inched my way out.

By the time a cab had carried me back across Baxter territory to the house, the sky had gone dark.

Breathing hard, I gripped the door handle. The moment it opened, a damp, heated smell rolled over me.

The sounds of Ivy and Wallace tangled together nearly pierced my eardrums.

I shut the door, breaking, and slid slowly down the wall until I crouched there, holding my head in my hands.

Enough. Enough, already. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear a single word of it.

I don't know how long passed before the bedroom door opened again.

Ivy was barely dressed, her face still flushed, a scatter of red marks down the length of her slim neck.

Water trickled from the bathroom behind her, the only sound in a house where every door had a soldier somewhere behind it.

She leaned against the doorframe like she owned every brick the Baxter name had ever bought, looking down her nose at me, her voice low and mean.

"Throwing yourself at Wallace every single day, begging him to give you a baby. Where do you get the nerve?"

"You want a baby so badly? Fine, you got one. Happy now? One word from me and all three brothers can have a turn with you. Want me to dump you in a gutter next time?"

She kept talking, and she kept advancing, and I had no choice but to back away, one step at a time, until the cold edge of the landing pressed at my heels.

"So Wallace married you. A blood-alliance, a pact between bloodlines. So what? I'm the only one he wants. The way he looked just now, losing himself in me, you sad little thing, have you ever once seen that? You're nothing but a body to use."

Her red lips and white teeth opened and closed, and all I could see was the jealousy soaking through her face.

I almost laughed inside. Three men taking turns degrading me, leaving me broken and bleeding, and she envied that?

No. What she envied was that I'd had a one-in-three chance of carrying Wallace's child, the only blood that mattered under this roof.

The thought made my hand drift, without my meaning it to, to my belly.

I never imagined one small movement would set her off like that.

"A bastard that doesn't even know who its father is, and you've got the gall to gloat? You think you deserve this?"

Afraid Wallace would hear from the room beyond, I played dumb. "Ivy, what are you talking about? I don't understand. I don't know why Wallace took me for that test either, but the baby in my belly is his, it has to be."

She was wild with envy now. "Who said you could carry his child? Who? If I can't give him a baby, then neither can you."

Then she threw out her arm and shoved me, hard.

My heels were already against the stairs. I went straight over backward. The world spun, pain everywhere, and worse in my belly.

Wallace heard the commotion and rushed out.

Ivy made a show of sinking to the floor, crying out. Her head tilted just so, and her face softened into something almost sad, the practiced grief of a girl who had never once been doubted in this Family.

"I call you sister-in-law. I came over to help clean up because I saw you were pregnant. And the second I walk in you start hitting me?"

"Why did you throw yourself down those stairs? Are you trying to frame me, to say I pushed you? I didn't, I swear. Sister-in-law, why are you doing this to me?"

Then, pretending she'd only just noticed Wallace, she sobbed and spoke up for me.

"Wallace, don't worry about me. Go check on her, please. She slipped and fell on her own."

Wallace caught sight of the red marks bare on Ivy's skin, and something guilty flickered through his eyes and was gone. He yanked off his coat and draped it over her like a man covering evidence.

"Ivy, are you hurt? I'll take you to the hospital."

"I'm fine, my leg just aches a little. She looks worse off..."

He gave me one cold look, scooped Ivy up into his arms, and snapped down at me. "Don't think I didn't hear. Ivy came here out of kindness. When did you turn into someone this ungrateful?"

I lay on the floor, my eyelids ready to fall shut the next instant, and forced my trembling lips to explain. My thumb found the wedding band and turned it once around my finger, the only thing in me still moving.

"No. I didn't. She pushed"

"Save the wounded act. Still trying to pin it on Ivy? You can't even lie properly. She's so frail she can't twist a bottle cap open. You think she could push you? And Ivy's kind-hearted, what reason would she ever have to push you? Dora, when did you become this person?"

With that he carried Ivy down the stairs, and as he passed me he kicked me aside like a stray dog the soldiers should have put down already.

"You like lying there, lie there a while longer. Just stay out of the way."

Ivy turned her head and gave me a smug little smile, the softness gone from her face the instant it had done its work, leaving only the eyes that had been cold underneath all along.

The car's engine roared away below the estate, and the dark closed in over my eyes.

But I couldn't let myself black out. The pain low in my belly was wrong, too sharp to be anything ordinary, and Wallace wasn't coming back to take care of me. In a Family built on the word protection, there was no one to lean on but myself.

It took a long time before I could gather enough strength to grip the marble railing and pull myself up.

Afraid of what might come out of me on the way, I didn't dare send for a car or trust any of the soldiers posted at the gate. I walked to the hospital.

The night-shift nurse in the ER took one look at me, blood soaking my lower body, doubled over from the cramps, and rushed to get me admitted.

The doctor read through the chart from my visit earlier that day and clicked her tongue. "Honey, who performs an amniocentesis at three weeks? The pregnancy hadn't even settled yet. Your uterus was already irritated and contracting, and then you fell down a flight of stairs. I doubt we can save the baby."

After the exam she came back furious, scolding me. "You've got some tolerance for pain. Hemorrhaging like this and you wait this long? Do you have a death wish?"

I only let out a long breath and laughed. "Doctor, just go ahead and do the abortion."

From the moment I'd learned the truth, every second had filled me with revulsion toward the unfeeling thing inside me.

Gone. Good.

This child had come like a dream, and now I was awake, and it was over.

A day later I went home to the estate. Just as I'd expected, Wallace had carried Ivy off and hadn't come back since. No guard at the door asked where I'd been. No one in this house asked anything of the bride brought in on a blood-alliance.

The floor, the bed, everything still bore the wreckage they'd left behind.

I stepped around the stains, ran into the bathroom, and scrubbed myself raw, dozens of times.

I kept thinking I smelled of something. The moment things went quiet, the smell would swell until it was all I could sense.

The smell of a man. The smell of a dead child. As if no amount of washing could ever get it off.

I broke. I hurled everything to the floor and sobbed with my face pressed down into the tub.

As the water closed over me and my breath ran out, I thought of my parents.

Back when I learned I'd be married off to Wallace to seal the pact between the Pruitt and Baxter bloodlines, I'd been beside myself with joy. I chose every piece of my dowry myself; my father paid for all of it. Only the folder at the very bottom had been placed in my hands by them.

I remembered the day I left to be married, my mother handing it to me.

"Dora, I know this union has its purpose, what it buys the Family. But your father and I still hope you'll be happy. And if the day ever comes when you aren't, remember, your blood is always your way back."

"If it's possible, we hope you never open it."

I stood up and ran to the study, digging out that folder.

Inside was a dissolution of the alliance my parents had drawn up for me, a way out drafted in advance. By some means I didn't know, my father had already gotten Wallace to put his name to it. The division of everything protected my interests one hundred percent. That was Ned Pruitt. He had foreseen this house for what it was long before I ever set foot in it.

Without a flicker of hesitation, I signed my name.

The pen had barely lifted when Wallace called, his voice careful. "Are you... all right?"

My tone was flat. "Is there something I should be?"

"Good, as long as you're fine. The other day was my fault, I shouldn't have yelled at you. I just lost my head when I saw Ivy hurt, that's why I said those harsh things."

"I went back to find you afterward, and you'd already gone, so I figured you must be okay."

That thin, coaxing note in his voice, coaxing and resentful both, made me want to laugh.

"Is there anything else?"

Two cold words from me and his patience snapped right back. "I already apologized, what more do you want? Don't tell me you did nothing wrong. I'm calling to tell you that Ivy says she forgives you for shoving her that day. She's even inviting you to the auction, the underground den down by the wharf. They want to put together a gift to congratulate you on the pregnancy."

"Unbelievable. The belly's barely showing and the temper's already up. Could you try learning something from Ivy for once?"

I stayed silent at my end of the line.

When I said nothing, Wallace ran out of steam, and his tone softened.

"All right, enough. Ivy hurt her leg, I'm here looking after her. I'll send the driver to pick you up in a bit."

I'd barely set the receiver down when Ivy's message lit up the screen.

"Sis, don't you dare skip out on me. I've got a special little gift waiting just for you!"

"Those late-night photos of you and the four of us? They're going up as the grand finale lot at the den tonight. Crystal-clear. Totally uncensored~"

Then came the pictures. Dozens of them, one after another. Pictures of me.

My phone started ringing on top of it all, the ringtone shrieking like a man come to collect a debt that could only be paid in blood.

I flinched so hard the phone hit the floor, and something inside me dropped with it.

Every scrap of courage the dissolution pact had given me crumbled.

I'd been so naive. I'd actually believed that ending the pregnancy and burying the past would close the door on all of it.

It wouldn't. Wallace, Ivy, and those two men would hold on to me with everything they had, dragging it back, reminding me every single hour. Omert cut both ways. They would never let me go quietly. It would never be over.

Shaking all over, I knelt and picked up the phone, and called my father's estate.

That warm, familiar voice came down the line, asking if I'd been eating well, dressing warm, if anyone under the Baxter roof had been treating me badly, and the tears just broke loose. I told them everything, start to finish, every last thing.

In the end I begged through the crying. "Pap, can I break the union now? Can I come home? I can't stay with him anymore!"

When my father had heard it all, a trembling breath came back over the line. In the quiet behind it I could almost hear the soft clink of a bottle, the grappa he poured when something had to be settled.

"Dora, tesoro, you've suffered enough. A car will come for you tonight. The Family will handle the rest. Just come home and get some real sleep. Everything's going to be all right."

Wallace's driver came first. I handed the soldier a file and told him to take it on ahead to the den.

Then I got into the car going home, the ringtone slicing through the quiet, on and on.

Wallace. Those two words kept buzzing across the screen. I pulled the SIM card out and threw it from the window into the dark.

The auction at the underground den was nearly over and I still hadn't shown. Wallace's face had gone darker by the minute, the men around him going still the way men do when the heir-apparent's mood turns, and only now did his soldier finally bring the file over.

"Half the night gone, no wife, and what I get is a sheet of paper?" He let the words hang, and the table held its breath.

The soldier's head dipped lower and lower. "It's... it's true, sir. Madam said what's inside is something she wants. She asked you to keep an eye on it for her. She said she'd be along a little later."

A doting little laugh curved at Wallace's mouth. He glanced sideways, the way he always did, hunting for someone to share the cruelty of it. No one met his eyes. His long fingers slowly slid the file open.

Two words met his eyes, and the smile froze on his face.

Dissolution pact.

At that exact moment, the auctioneer struck the gavel twice across the smoke-thick room. "And now, the final lot of tonight's wager..."