Page 110 of Ivory Oath

If Anatoly and Viviana were followed and attacked by Christos or Agostino, I wanted to have the element of surprise on our side. That was Raoul. He was like the backup parachute: you don’t jump out of a plane expecting the first parachute to fail, but you’re an idiot if you don’t plan for it just in case. It has nothing to do with not trusting Anatoly and everything to do with the fact that I’d never be able to forgive myself if something happened to Viviana.

Raoul looks around the room again like he still isn’t sure.

“I assume they made it back to the mansion okay?” I prod.

Raoul runs a hand through his hair and it strikes me that I’ve never seen him fidget. I’ve never seen his eyes dart around the room the way they are right now.

He won’t look at me.

“Raoul,” I bark. Instantly, his eyes are on me and his shoulders are back. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Have you spoken to Anatoly?”

I ease back. “Yeah. He told me about the confirmed shipment. He planted false information for Christos to find, so everything is covered there. We’re looking good.”

Raoul’s shoulders drop. “That’s all he said?”

Shit.

My bullshit detector is world-class after everything I’ve been through. I trust it. But I still rewind through my interactions with Anatoly today, searching for something I missed the first time.

Nothing.

“Stop asking questions and tell me what is going on,” I demand.

Raoul sits down in the chair across from me and I immediately know this isn’t going to be good. “I followed Anatoly’s car from the moment they left the mansion. He never saw me,” he says. “I know he didn’t see me because… he made a stop.”

“What kind of stop?”

“At a nearby clinic.”

I stand up before I know why. My body is ready to move even while my mind is wrapping itself around the information.

She went to a doctor’s office before she came to see me. The first time I let her leave the house in days and she lied to me. Anatoly, too.

“What kind of clinic was it? Where was it? If she’s sick, she should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to come to you without answers, so after I followed Viviana and Anatoly home, I went back to the clinic. I met with Viviana’s doctor.”

“And?” I press.

“She’s pregnant.”

He says it quickly like he’s ripping off a bandage, but the news spreads through me slowly. It’s a toxic swirl of dread and rage that turns my blood cold and pools at the base of my spine. “She would have told me.”

She would have told me, right?

After everything we’ve been through, all the false starts and stops, Viviana wouldn’t keep this from me.

Raoul looks down at the floor. “The doctor didn’t want to tell me, but I threatened her. It wasn’t a nice clinic and it didn’t take much for her to show me Viviana’s charts just to get me out of her face. Her first test was positive and they confirmed it with a blood test.”

I was inside of her, telling her how much I wanted her to carry my child.

Once I fuck a baby into you, I want you to take these pictures again, I told her. I hope it happens now. Any time I see you and the way you’re growing my child, I’ll remember you like this.

It was already too late. She knew she was pregnant.

But she still didn’t tell me.

---