Page 71 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

Every time I nearly indulge in that line of thinking, I have to stop myself. It’s too painful to think about Achilles and Sidony and the brief home we found with each other. It’s too painful to wonder what Achilles would think if I got to tell him I’m carrying his child. Would it just make him resent me more? Or would he keep me at a polite distance for the sake of our baby?

Which of those possibilities is more painful?

As my first trimester comes to an end, I find myself studying the shape of my body in the mirror. I’m so petite that my pregnancy is already beginning to change me, just a little. My breasts, cheeks, and hips are a bit fuller, and when I put a hand to my stomach, I can almost imagine there’s a bit of a bump there too.

It should make me feel entranced, curious, excited. And it does.

But it also makes me want to cry until I have no tears left in me.

My first ultrasound appointment is later this morning, and I’m a jumble of nerves. I never went to the doctor as a kid. As a teenager I only dragged my ass to a walk-in clinic when I had a fever that was so bad I started hallucinating, and I had to lie about every one of my personal details, especially my age. Nowthat I have months of mandatory doctor’s visits ahead of me, I’m discovering a fear I didn’t even know I had.

Still, it’s one I’m going to have to get over, for the sake of my own child. I’m not repeating a single one of my father’s mistakes.

Raleigh chatters my ear off in the back of the town car on our way to the office, graciously ignoring how clammy my hand is in hers. She’s left Roman with his father, but I can tell she hates being away from him for even a moment. Whenever they’re apart, all she talks about his him.

Is Achilles that kind of parent? I know he’s always thinking of Sidony, but if he were living a more peaceful life, would he talk about her all the time too? Would he share her funny turns of phrase with Freddie in The Cooper’s Arms in the middle of a collection call?

I can’t help but imagine it, and I can’t stop my imagination from stretching just a little further.

Would he coo endlessly over a new baby, nap with them without care on the couch, play with their toes and make them laugh? My throat and chest ache at the cruelty of such beautiful moments that won’t ever exist.

I’m so anxious by the time we arrive at the doctor’s office that when he takes note of my blood pressure and heart rate, he asks if I’ve been feeling sick lately. I stammer that I’m just nervous for this appointment and excited to see my baby for the first time, and that’s true enough. The idea that there’s a tiny living thing inside me has been in the back of my mind for weeks, but I’ve had so little tangible proof of it that sometimes I wake up and think I’ve imagined the pregnancy entirely.

Today, I’ll be able toseethe baby inside me. Today, this will finally start to feel real.

I feel a little better once I’m lying down, and the cold jelly the doctor spreads over my stomach is enough of a shock that my nausea finally dissipates. Raleigh sits in a chair on my left,still holding my hand steadily in both of hers. For a brief second, I imagine what it would be like to have Achilles here with me instead of her, holding my hand and excited to get a first look at our baby. The next moment, my stomach twists at that ingratitude, but I can’t help it.

The doctor is on my right, fiddling with his machinery. He presses the nozzle thing to my stomach, sending another chill through me, but I stay as still as a corpse as he moves it over my skin, searching for a good angle.

“There it is,” he says, watching his screen. His tone is casual, almost bored, as he adjusts the nozzle again. “And there’s the… oh… two!”

Wait, two? Two what?! Limbs? Heads? Tumors?

He shifts his screen so I can see it before I can fling myself off the bed. My heart stutters in shock. Through the shifting black and blue shapes, I see two little forms curled up tight.

Two.

“Twins?!” Raleigh gasps. I’m not sure which of us is clinging to the other in a death grip, but my fingers are aching and I can’t even care.

I’m pregnant with twins.

Paul is smoking on the back porch when I find him a few days later, but he stomps out his cig when he sees me coming.

“How ya feeling, kid?” he asks, like he does every day.

He knows most of what Raleigh knows now. I didn’t care about keeping my pregnancy a secret, and once the information was out, there were very few guesses about who the father could be. And then of course I had to explain that everything that happened between Achilles and I was consensual in order tosmother the immediate fires of rage that popped up all over the estate. Thomas was especially enraged, since he knew that at least part of the reason it happened was because I was complying with my captivity, a captivity he couldn’t save me from quickly enough. SothenI had to explain that I did, in fact, have feelings for Achilles, which made the situation ten times more awkward and painful.

Since that mess exploded in my lap, everyone has been very indulgent about me and my situation. I’m still being paid, for god’s sake, even though I haven’t had an official job on the estate for months. I appreciate the concern from Paul and Raleigh, but I can’t stand it from anyone else.

Worse, I feel like I know the answer to Paul’s daily question less and less as time goes by. After the bombshell of my ultrasound appointment, I’ve been getting through each day in a haze. I haven’t told anyone else the results, and Raleigh agreed to keep it secret until I was ready to talk about them.

Paul must see just how lost I am on my face, because he turns to me fully. "Guessing not great, huh?" he says, his voice softening as he reads my expression.

I lean against one of the posts holding up the porch. Since the appointment, I’ve carried my sonogram in my pocket, folded into quarters. My hand finds it for the hundredth time, and I pull it out and pass it to him. Paul unfolds the picture, and when he realizes what he’s seeing, he looks up at me with an open mouth.

“No way. Twins?”

I nod, but I can’t quite look at his face. If I didn’t know what to do with my life after giving birth to one child, I doubly don’t know what to do with two. It’s not that I’m not happy, but how can Ireallybe excited when I have so little idea what comes next? More than ever, I feel too young to be a mother on my own.

---