Chapter 4 - The Marriage We Never Agreed To Have
The cramp turned out to be nothing dangerous.
Dr. Foster called it round ligament pain combined with dehydration and stress, then looked directly at Alexander when she said the last word.
"Mrs. Moretti needs a normal life," she told him. "Not bed rest. Not confinement. Not a security detail following her to the bathroom. A normal life."
Alexander's face remained perfectly serious.
"Define normal."
Dr. Foster looked at me.
I laughed so hard I almost cried again.
"Doctor, please write it down before he turns the mansion into a maternity ward."
"I have not turned anything into a maternity ward."
"You removed the espresso machine from my sitting room."
"You aren't supposed to drink much caffeine."
"I had one cup a day."
"Now you have none."
Dr. Foster folded her arms.
"One small coffee is generally fine."
I smiled.
Alexander looked betrayed.
It was ridiculous.
It was also the first genuinely light moment we had shared since the ultrasound.
On the drive home, however, the silence returned.
The truth about my old records sat between us like a third passenger.
When we reached the mansion, Daniel was waiting in Alexander's study.
He had obtained the name of a records administrator who had worked at my old hospital three years earlier: Melissa Grant.
She had left six months after my diagnosis.
"Where is she now?" Alexander asked.
"Milwaukee."
"Contact her."
"Already did. She refused to discuss Claire."
"That isn't encouraging."
"No. But she didn't say she didn't know Claire. She said she wouldn't discuss her."
I sat on the sofa and pressed my palms together.
"Can we force her?"
Daniel glanced at Alexander.
"Not without formal proceedings. The hospital's counsel is cooperating, but they're understandably cautious. We're preserving the evidence and preparing subpoenas if needed."
"Do it," Alexander said.
I looked at him.
"You realize this could become public."
"It probably will."
"Your family will hate that."
"My family survives quarterly earnings calls. They'll survive a medical-records scandal."
"That's not what I mean."
He knew.
The Moretti family had spent generations controlling how Chicago saw them. Alexander's grandfather had built the company's first real estate fortune. His father had expanded into logistics and hotels. Alexander had taken over at twenty-eight and turned Moretti Holdings into something larger, colder, and almost impossible to challenge.
Everything about him was managed.
His schedule.
His image.
His relationships.
Even our marriage had begun as a risk-control decision.
Now I was pregnant with twins because of one night neither of us had planned.
And the reason he had chosen me might have been fabricated by my own family.
"If this becomes public," I said, "they'll say I deceived you."
He stared at me.
"You didn't."
"That won't matter."
"It will to me."
"Your board may not care what matters to you."
His mouth curved without humor.
"My board cares very much what matters to me. That's why they're still my board."
Daniel looked at his notes with heroic concentration.
I stood.
"I need some air."
Alexander started to rise.
"Alone," I said.
He paused.
Then sat back down.
It was such a small thing, but I noticed.
He had listened.
I walked into the back garden.
The mansion grounds were still gray from winter. Bare branches stretched over stone paths. The fountain was covered. No flowers yet.
I sat on a bench beneath an old elm tree and placed both hands over my abdomen.
Fourteen weeks.
I still couldn't feel them.
Sometimes I wondered if I had imagined the entire ultrasound.
Then I remembered two flickering heartbeats.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
I didn't know whether I was talking to the babies, my younger self, or both.
"I'm sorry I believed you were impossible."
A shadow fell across the path.
I looked up.
Alexander stood several feet away.
"I said alone."
"You did."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because this is my garden."
I stared at him.
He sat at the opposite end of the bench.
"I am technically alone over here."
I rolled my eyes.
For a while, we watched a pair of sparrows fight over something in the grass.
Then Alexander spoke.
"Our agreement is invalid."
My body went cold.
There it was.
The thing I had been waiting for since the ultrasound.
I kept my voice steady.
"I know."
"The basis of it was false."
"Apparently."
"You wanted to leave your family. I wanted a wife who would stop mine from demanding an heir."
"I'm aware of why you married me."
"Are you?"
I turned to him.
He looked straight ahead.
"Because I am beginning to think I wasn't."
I frowned.
He continued.
"When my grandmother first gave me your name, I rejected it."
That surprised me.
"She gave you my name?"
"She gave me fourteen names. Yours was number nine."
"How romantic."
"I said no to all fourteen."
"That sounds more like you."
He ignored the comment.
"Then I met you at the Langford benefit."
I remembered the night.
I had worn a black dress and spent twenty minutes hiding on a terrace because Victoria kept introducing Olivia as "the daughter who would give our family grandchildren."
Alexander had stepped outside to take a call.
We had spoken for maybe seven minutes.
"You complained about the orchestra," I said.
"They were terrible."
"You said charity galas were legalized extortion."
"Also true."
"And I told you that you were rude."
"You were the only person in that room who did."
He looked at me now.
"I remembered you."
My heartbeat shifted.
"Then Daniel's background report mentioned your diagnosis. I realized a marriage between us could solve a problem for both of us. So yes, your presumed infertility made the arrangement logical."
I swallowed.
"That's what I said."
"But it isn't why I asked you instead of someone else."
I went very still.
"Why did you?"
He looked annoyed by the question, which was almost funny considering he had created it.
"Because you didn't flatter me. You didn't fear me. You didn't try to impress me. And when I explained exactly what the marriage would be, you asked for your own attorney before you said yes."
"That impressed you?"
"It irritated me."
I smiled.
"Same thing, with you."
His eyes warmed for a second.
Then he looked back toward the garden.
"I am telling you this because the agreement may have been built on a false fact, but that doesn't mean you owe me an exit."
"An exit?"
"If you want the marriage dissolved, I will make it easy."
My lungs forgot how to work.
He continued before I could speak.
"You will be financially protected. There will be no dispute. No public fight. And the children will be provided for regardless of what you decide."
Every word was responsible.
Every word was generous.
Every word hurt.
"So that's what you want?"
He turned sharply.
"No."
"You just offered me a divorce."
"I offered you a choice."
"Why?"
"Because you didn't have one when you married me."
I stood.
"I absolutely had a choice."
"You were living in a house where your stepmother used your infertility as entertainment and your father refused to defend you. I offered you a door. Of course you walked through it."
"Don't reduce me to someone you rescued."
He stood too.
"I am not."
"Then stop deciding what I would have done if my diagnosis had been different."
His face tightened.
"Fine. What would you have done?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because I didn't know.
Three years of my life had been shaped by a fact that might have been manufactured.
Who would I have been without it?
Would I have married Alexander?
Would he have asked?
Would we have shared that drunken night?
Would two babies now be growing inside me?
"I don't know," I whispered.
His expression softened.
"Neither do I."
The honesty hurt less than certainty would have.
He stepped closer.
"But I know what I want now."
I looked up.
My heart pounded.
"What?"
His eyes held mine.
For one second, I thought he was going to say me.
Instead he said, "Time."
I almost laughed from the frustration of it.
Of course.
Alexander Moretti would turn an emotional crisis into a request for a scheduling extension.
"Time for what?"
"To find out what this marriage is when neither of us is hiding behind the reason we signed the contract."
That was somehow more intimate than if he had declared love.
I looked down.
"And the babies?"
"They're not part of the negotiation."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I already want them."
My eyes snapped back to his.
He looked almost angry at having admitted it.
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Approximately the moment Baby B moved on the screen."
Tears burned my eyes.
"You really name them Baby A and Baby B in your head?"
"Until we have better options."
"You know they're not quarterly projects."
"I am aware."
I laughed.
Then I cried.
Again.
Pregnancy had turned my dignity into a temporary condition.
Alexander stared at my tears with the same helpless expression he had worn in the foyer.
Then, carefully, he lifted one hand and brushed a tear from my cheek.
It was the first time he had touched my face while sober.
Neither of us moved.
The air between us changed.
His thumb lingered near my cheekbone.
My eyes dropped to his mouth.
His breathing changed.
The phone in his pocket rang.
We both stepped apart so quickly it would have been funny under any other circumstances.
He answered.
"Moretti."
His expression hardened.
"When?"
A pause.
"Who told her?"
Another pause.
Then he looked at me.
"Understood. Don't respond."
He ended the call.
"What happened?" I asked.
"My grandmother knows you're pregnant."
I closed my eyes.
"How?"
"Victoria called her personally."
Of course she did.
"What did she say?"
His jaw flexed.
"That you trapped me with another man's children."
The garden went silent.
I felt something inside me harden.
Not break.
Harden.
"Then maybe," I said, "it's time we stopped letting Victoria decide what everyone hears first."
Alexander studied me.
"What are you suggesting?"
I looked toward the mansion.
"Invite your family to dinner."
He raised an eyebrow.
"All of them?"
"The ones who matter."
"Claire, my family dinners have caused resignations."
"My family dinners caused fake medical records."
For the first time, Alexander actually smiled.
It was brief.
May you like
It was devastating.
"Fair point," he said.
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