Page 87 of Hell Hath No Fury

Smiling, I turn my attention to Antonio, who’s tapping his fingertips on the table rather nervously, asking, “Are you alright?”

He nods, far too quickly, and with far too much vigor, and my eyes narrow in response as I add, “What? What is it?”

“Maybe we should talk about this privately.”

This can’t be good.

“Dude,” Tony says lazily. “We just talked about fertilizing one of my closest friend’s mother’s frozen eggs with my sperm. There is nothing private around here anymore.”

All the color drains from his face, and he seems to be having difficulty meeting my eyes. “What the fuck did you do?”

“It was stupid, really, I know, but,” he responds with significant hesitation. “I’d just been notified of your untimely death, and I know in these instances, they normally dispose of unused samples, and I just thou—”

“Just tell me what the fuck you did, Antonio,” I shout, my worry over what he possibly could have done to have him so uncharacteristically nervous at an all-time high.

Sighing deeply, he places his hand over mine, squeezing firmly as he responds, “Your frozen eggs are actually embryos.”

My blood runs cold in my veins. “What?”

“The eggs that you had in storage,” he responds slowly, clearly. “Back when you died but ended up not being truly dead dead, I used my sperm to fertilize your eggs.”

“Oh, shit,” Agatha whispers, but my eyes don’t leave Antonio.

“What? How?”

He lifts a shoulder and tilts his head. “Money, how else?”

I blink at him, completely dumbfounded. Everyone is silent. All I hear is the pounding of my own heart and that incessant tapping of his finger on the tabletop, which is ridiculous considering, for most people, it’s probably soundless tapping.

“Let me get this straight,” I finally manage to say through my gritted teeth. “Somehow, you found out I put my eggs on ice.” He goes to speak, but I put my hand up, stopping him. “Then, I supposedly died, so you thought to yourself, ‘You know what this world needs? More of our babies,’ and proceeded to bribe a medical facility to not only inject your sperm into my eggs but also to keep this fact hidden from me indefinitely once it turned out I was not indeed dead?”

He has the decency to look somewhat contrite, but I don’t believe for one minute that he truly feels remorseful about high-jacking my eggs. “I know it was a stupid thing for me do. It was invasive, presumptuous, and wrong on so many levels, but even if you weren’t dead, the mere idea that someone else would get to—”

He stops talking abruptly, but we all know what he was going to say. He didn’t want there to be even a tiny chance that I would have a family with anyone other than him. Ever.

Staring at him, I attempt to dissect my chaotic emotions in this moment. Shock. Anger. And something else I can’t quite pinpoint. Something wild and a bit insane.

So, after a long moment of silence, I laugh.

I laugh and laugh and laugh until tears stream from my eyes because this has to be one of the most ludicrous things that has ever happened to me, and I am relatively certain ludicrous things tend to just follow me around for sport.

Everyone stares at me as if I’ve gone completely mental, and I can’t say I blame them. Then Antoinette giggles, too, and everyone turns their attention to her, frowning. She laughs again, this time more loudly, and Darius asks, “What could possibly be funny right now?”

“Nothing,” Antoinette mutters, waving him off. “It’s stupid.”

Agatha responds, “She was gonna make a joke, I know it.”

Antoinette’s sheepish expression proves Agatha is correct, so I say, “Well, go on, then. May as well take the piss out of it and get it over with.”

She smiles brightly, leaning forward and teasing her forearms on the table as she explains, “This is like those super morally grey guys who fuck with their woman’s birth control. Total diabolical shit.”

“I mean,” Agatha responds. “Technically, all he did was create some embryos that will sit on ice for eternity. He didn’t go so far as to fertilize her eggs and then implant them in her uterus ‘cause now that would be fucked up.”

“Pretty sure it’s been done,” Tony adds.

“Oh, yeah. Definitely,” Agatha agrees. “Though most likely not done in loving and protective relationships because we all know how fucked up things get with power-hungry shitbags.”

Antoinette nods, making a face of disgust as she says, “That’s for fucking sure.” She pauses, then her smile returns as she adds, “But this isalmostromantic.”

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