Page 40 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

She gasps softly and reaches for my hand, clasping it tightly. “Ma pauvre petite.Of course, I understand. It’s a piece of him, no?”

I smile again, and this time, I don’t have to act to make it look sad. This baby? It is indeed a piece of him, the man who has my heart. He never got to become my husband in the eyes of the law, but I have pledged myself to him, even if he’ll never know this now.

The conversation around me continues, Mrs. Foucault telling me of her own struggles with IVF in the rapid French so typical of Parisians. I match her tit for tat, and before long, she’s taken me under her wing, like an injured duckling she needs to protect.

I exchange a glance with Hiro, who is talking with the ambassador and another man. He lifts his champagne flute and winks at me.

Mission accomplished—I’m in.

How easy was it, in the end? Too easy, almost. Standing their chit-chatting at an international gala held at the French embassy in Tokyo, I’m left wondering what my life has come to, and more importantly, how it got to this.

*

Three months earlier

I’m not bothered having Hana in the bathroom with me as I pee on the stick she handed to me after I threw up in the powder room downstairs. She’ll soon know my deepest, darkest secret—what’s a bit of nudity thrown in there?

And sure enough, the second line appears in the little window on the plastic wand.

I’m pregnant.

I sigh, just as tears pool in my eyes and start to drip down my cheeks.

“I’m not getting rid of this baby, Han,” I tell her, looking up.

Her face is drawn, features severe. “B, it’s not Ardian’s, is it?”

A rush of bile burns the back of my throat. I turn and vomit into the toilet bowl.

“Of course not,” I say after washing my mouth out. “I haven’t gone anywhere near that sick pervert.”

To think of what he could do to me… I shudder.

“I’m not going to ask because it doesn’t really matter, in the scheme of things. You can’t be here and be carrying another man’s baby when you’re engaged to someone in a political alliance,” she adds.

I choke on a sob. Not just any man’s. Leo’s. Possibly his heir, if it’s a boy. If this comes to be known, we’ll have a war on our hands. And I’m not sure we’re going to survive it.

If anything happens to Leo, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. Even more so if it’s my fault.

Then when the Abrashis come to find out I’m not the pure bride they’re expecting, that another man put his seed inside me and it’s already started growing, they’ll kill me, and my child, too.

I can’t let this happen.

I grab Hana’s hands tight. “I have to disappear.”

She remains silent for so long, my heart drops into a bottomless pit of despair. If she tells Mattia, or my father, they’ll be adamant I get rid of this baby. I wouldn’t put it past my father to then hire a surgeon who can build me a new hymen so there’ll be a barrier for my husband to break and blood staining the sheets on our wedding night.

“I’ll help you,” she finally says.

All the breath whooshes out of me as I slump into her arms. “Thank you.”

A part of me wants to ask why she is doing this for me. We’re friends, yes, but she’s married to my brother. Her loyalty should be to him, not me. But I’m also not going to look down on such womanly solidarity, so I stay silent and let her take control.

And take control, she does. In the week that follows, Hana directs all my moves. She takes me to a club in SoHo one night, past the bar, the VIP lounge, the door marked ‘Staff Only’—it’s like she’s a regular here. No one stops her. I’ll admit I’m totally surprised, since it looks like she has a side of her life I know nothing about. We go downstairs to a basement where she plops me onto a stool and steps back with a frown.

“You trust me, B?”

Funny, she’s stopped calling me Bianca since that day in her bathroom when we found out I’m pregnant. Again, I didn’t ask why. She’s got her reasons—I’m more concerned with protecting the child growing inside me.

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