PART 1: THE QUESTION HE HAD NO RIGHT TO ASK
When Luca Moretti encountered me for the first time after our divorce, I was eight months pregnant with his child. And Vanessa Sinclair was holding his arm. For a moment, all three of us stood motionless.
I stood beside a white oak crib in an elegant Madison Avenue nursery boutique, one hand supporting my heavy stomach, as Luca gazed at me from less than twenty feet away. His expression transformed so dramatically I could barely recognize him. Vanessa gripped his sleeve more tightly. That was what caught my attention first.
I hardly noticed his expensive charcoal suit. Nor did the silver on his wrist. Nor his familiar angular jaw, which I once traced in the dark. Seeing her touch him should no longer have hurt. Our divorce had been finalized precisely seven months earlier.
Slightly over eight months had passed because I walked out of the Manhattan townhouse where I expected to grow old. Luca was no longer mine. Yet my body recognized him before pride intervened. Our baby moved beneath my ribs. Luca eventually spoke my name.
“Isabella?”
His voice suggested he had seen a ghost.
“Hello, Luca.”
Vanessa glanced between my face and belly.
“How far along are you?”
Whatever I said, the truth was already visible.
“Eight months.”
Luca looked down at my stomach. Then came a question that wounded me deeply.
“Is the baby mine?”
I wanted to strike him.
“The dates aren’t complicated, Luca.”
A sales assistant behind me feigned rearranging a display of linen blankets. Vanessa composed herself first.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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