Chapter 2 - The Man From Baltimore
Dante did not ask me whether the baby was his in the cemetery.
That surprised me.
He looked at the curve of my stomach more than once.
He understood arithmetic.
So did I.
Twenty three weeks.
One night in Baltimore twenty four weeks earlier.
But he did not turn a possibility into ownership.
Instead he said:
“You need a doctor.”
“I’m not bleeding.”
“You were hit.”
“The baby is moving.”
“Good. You still need a doctor.”
Bianca laughed.
“She’s manipulating you already.”
Dante’s security chief, Rafael Cole, stepped between them.
“Ma’am, stay back.”
Bianca stared at him.
“Do you know who my father is?”
Rafael replied:
“Yes.”
Nothing else.
That answer infuriated her more than ignorance would have.
Preston stood near the path, hands open.
“Mara, let me drive you.”
“No.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You had three years.”
His face tightened.
Dante watched.
“You were married?”
Preston answered:
“It’s complicated.”
“It isn’t.”
I stood slowly.
“My ex husband.”
Dante’s expression became unreadable.
Bianca said:
“And she still works in our house.”
Dante looked at me.
That question was harder.
“Why?”
“Later.”
I reached for my bracelet.
He did not hand it over immediately.
He turned the clasp once more.
Then gently placed it in my palm.
“You said Eleanor was your mother.”
“She was.”
“Biological?”
I stared.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A necessary one.”
“Yes. As far as I know.”
Dante nodded.
The phrase as far as I know seemed to bother him.
“Did she ever talk about Isabella Moretti?”
“No.”
“Lorenzo Moretti?”
“No.”
“Saint Gabriel redevelopment?”
“No.”
Bianca interrupted.
“This is insane.”
Dante looked at her.
“What were you doing with her bracelet?”
“I grabbed whatever was in front of me.”
Lie.
I saw it now.
When Bianca had grabbed the chain, her fingers went directly to the clasp.
Dante saw something too.
He asked:
“Have you seen that symbol before?”
“No.”
Too fast.
Dante said:
“Try again.”
Bianca’s chin lifted.
“You do not interrogate me.”
“No.”
His voice stayed calm.
“But the police might.”
Her eyes widened.
“You would call police over a maid?”
I touched my swollen lip.
Dante looked at the bruise forming on my cheek.
“No.”
He turned toward Bianca.
“Over assaulting a pregnant woman.”
I said:
“I’ll decide.”
Everyone looked at me.
Dante nodded immediately.
“Good.”
That mattered.
He did not decide for me.
I called the nonemergency number after being checked at an urgent care center near the cemetery.
The baby’s heartbeat was normal.
No abdominal trauma.
My cheek bruised.
Scalp tender from hair pulling.
Wrist red where Bianca had yanked the bracelet.
I gave a statement.
Dante did too.
So did his security men.
Preston claimed he arrived after the first slap.
True.
He saw Bianca grab my hair.
Also true.
Bianca called it “mutual confrontation.”
The mud on my knees and witnesses disagreed.
I requested a protective order.
Not because Dante told me to.
Because Bianca had followed me to my mother’s grave.
That crossed something I could not excuse.
Afterward, Dante waited in the clinic corridor.
I almost left through another door.
Then he said:
“Mara.”
I stopped.
His face was different from Baltimore.
In the hotel bar he had been tired, almost funny.
A stranger who told me he hated expensive whiskey but kept buying it because the bartender was proud of the bottle.
We talked about dead mothers without knowing we were talking about women who apparently knew each other.
He had said his mother died when he was eighteen.
I had said mine was dying.
Neither of us used surnames.
At sunrise, he wrote a number on a hotel card.
I threw it away two days later.
Not because the night was bad.
Because it was too good.
And men like that did not fit inside lives like mine.
Now he said:
“Is the child mine?”
Direct.
Quiet.
I looked at him.
“I think so.”
He closed his eyes.
Not joy.
Not anger.
Impact.
“I didn’t know how to find you,” he said.
“You knew my first name.”
“There are many Maras.”
“You could have tried harder.”
“I did.”
That surprised me.
“I knew you worked around Richmond from something you said. Nothing else.”
“I found out who you were.”
“When?”
“Three days later.”
“And?”
“I panicked.”
“Because of my family?”
“Yes.”
Honest.
“And because I had just been divorced from a man who left me for a senator’s daughter.”
He almost smiled.
“Reasonable.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yes. It was.”
He did not ask why I kept the pregnancy secret.
He asked:
“Do you want me involved?”
I looked away.
“I don’t know you.”
“True.”
“You have a reputation.”
“So does Senator Thorne.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“No.”
We sat in silence.
Then I asked:
“Why were you at the cemetery?”
His expression changed.
“My mother left journals.”
“Twenty years ago?”
“I received one six weeks ago.”
“How?”
“A former family attorney died. His executor found a sealed box addressed to me.”
My pulse changed.
“What was inside?”
“Pages written by Isabella before she died.”
“And my mother?”
“Her name appears nine times.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“I was hoping Eleanor could tell me.”
“She’s been dead two years.”
“I learned that yesterday.”
“So you came to her grave.”
“Yes.”
He looked at my broken bracelet.
“In one journal, my mother wrote about two bracelets she commissioned from a jeweler in Florence. One for her. One for Eleanor.”
“Why?”
“She called Eleanor the only person she trusted.”
My throat tightened.
Mom had never mentioned Isabella.
Dante continued:
“My mother died in a fire twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Officially an accident.”
“Unofficially?”
His eyes became cold.
“I’ve never believed that.”
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed.
A message from the head housekeeper at the Thorne estate.
Mara, do not come back. Mrs. Thorne ordered your room cleared.
Then another.
A photograph.
My mattress flipped.
Drawers emptied.
May you like
And on the floor beside my bed, the lid of my mother’s old wooden keepsake box lay open.
Someone had been looking for more than a pregnancy test.
