Page 88 of The Bonus

My god, how has it come to this?

Last week, my life was normal, my biggest drama was finding ballet slippers, this week it’s like a bad dream.

A living nightmare.

The worst part is, I already know their paternity, there isn’t even a need to do the test. There’s not one seed of doubt in my mind. Gabriel Ferrara is their biological father and there is nothing I can do about it.

“Just because I didn’t want you never meant that I didn’t want them.”

“Oh.” I screw up my face in tears. His words still hurt. I went straight back to being that woman who was madly in love with him, the pitiful woman with my heart on the bottom of his shoe, taking his hits blow by blow.

“Stop it, pull yourself together. You have to go home.”

I pull down the sunshield to fix my face in the mirror and I catch sight of a black car pulled over to the side of the road and parked about two hundred meters behind me.

What?

I turn around and my heart sinks for the thousandth time today, he’s having me followed so that I can’t disappear. And if I were a better person, I would tell you that going on the run with his children has never occurred to me.

But it has…especially today.

“You are the most selfish person I have ever met.”

He’s right, I am…but it takes one to know one.

And he’s the fucking king.

I pick myself up and dust myself off. I wipe my eyes and put my sunglasses on. I know I have to play by the rules, but fuck him. We’re doing this on my terms.

I pull out and drive down the road until our house comes into view.

I can do this.

I sit on the couch as the doctor walks the kids through the paternity test. “Just like this.” He shows them how he swabs his mouth. “It’s easy, see?”

Two security guards are waiting out on the porch, and a doctor and a nurse are inside with us.

I’m remaining silent because, I mean…what is there to say?

They know or at least suspect that I’ve been hiding his children, and I can only imagine what they must all think of me.

He told me to leave.

I watch on as they swab Lucia’s mouth and then Dominic’s, they take a strand of each of their hair and put the swabs into test tubes.

“There you go, all done.” The doctor smiles.

“How long will the results take to come in?” I ask.

“Around twenty-four hours, tomorrow sometime.” He replies.

I nod, and I want to blurt that I already know the result and that I’m not some sleep-around swindler who is trying to take him for millions, but damn it, I will only look like more of a loser.

“Thank you.” I open the front door in a cue for them to leave.

“Goodbye.” The nurse smiles softly as she walks past me. “Good luck.”

Seriously?

---