The Illegitimate King (Castaldini Crown 3)

Her sob fractured his thoughts. His world.

Clarissa…no…prego…please…don’t…

She didn’t hear his mental pleading. She started sobbing as if her heart had splintered, was tearing the rest of her apart.

She hated it, the child that was growing inside her. Couldn’t bear to have it invading her flesh, drawing from her life. Just because it was his child, too. Because she hated him.

He staggered. Nothing…nothing in his miserable, violent life had hit anywhere near this hard. Every injury he’d sustained had made him stronger. This…this finished him.

Something agonizing forged like white-hot skewers through his brain, poured like molten lead down his face, scorching his flesh and soul. He didn’t know what it was. Didn’t care.

Time distorted into a monstrous dimension more hideous than his worst nightmare.

Then it ceased. He didn’t know when or where he was. Just that he was leaning against a wall, feeling like a building about to collapse, and his eyes were burning and wet. Tears?

But he’d never shed them. After all he’d been through, he’d believed he wasn’t equipped with that most basic of human outlets. Now he knew. Among all the horrors he’d survived, nothing had hurt enough, mattered enough, to wring tears from his soul.

Her rejection far more than hurt. She far more than mattered.

He’d opened himself to her, let her in all the way. He’d let go of his safeguards, his anger, his pride. He’d believed in what he thought they shared. He’d deluded himself that she must have come to feel the same for him, to be that magnificent to him.

She felt nothing but abhorrence. She’d been forced into this marriage, hated bowing to the dictates of desire and the demands of patriotism. She despised him and loathed the idea of carrying his child.

He pushed away from the wall, slowly, methodically wiped away the unknown weakness, the manifestation of his surrender, his dependence. Then he headed back to Clarissa.

What she felt changed nothing. She was his wife. His queen. The mother of his child. What he felt didn’t matter.

He’d lived without a heart until he’d seen her. He’d grown one to love her with. It had been quivering and dancing in hope within him since their first night together. And she’d stilled it forever in one annihilating blow. Now it was as good as nonexistent again. And he’d just have to learn to live without it again.

The first crushing wave of misery receded.

Clarissa knew it would only crash over her with more brutal force when it gathered momentum. For now, she was floating within the calm between devastating hurricanes. Now she could analyze her misery, not just come apart under its onslaught.

So she was pregnant. According to the doctors, she’d been pregnant for a while. Now that they’d explained the mystery of the period she’d had, she knew. She’d gotten pregnant that first night. As Ferruccio, in his endless insight, had foreseen she would. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was by far the worst, too.

Now she’d never know if Ferruccio would remain married to her to have her, or to have his child. She’d been fooling herself, telling herself it wouldn’t matter as long as he remained this wonderful to her. She couldn’t live her life beside him, not knowing if he reciprocated her feelings, or knowing he couldn’t. That day he’d struck his bargain, he’d said that if either of them wanted to be with someone else, they’d find a civil solution. What if that bargain wasn’t erased, and his heart was untouched? What if, one day, he found the woman to touch it?

She finally understood the depths of misery and desperation that had eaten through her mother’s psyche, that had driven her, as they all suspected, to end her own life, when she’d come to believe that the husband she’d worshipped hadn’t just never loved her, but had given his heart to another.

“Clarissa.”

Ferruccio’s whisper hit her all the way from the door, clanged inside her as if he’d shouted her name.

She jerked around, thanked God her tears had dried. Her lips trembled into a smile of dread and longing. What was he thinking?

His tranquil steps brought him to her side in what seemed like an eternity. Why was he so calm? So…opaque?

He sat down beside her on the bed, reached out a gentle hand and stroked away tendrils of hair from her face. The tenderness of his touch didn’t match his guarded look. Dio…Dio…he wasn’t happy about this. She knew it. Just before he’d been told the news, he’d been passionate, impatient, eager…open. Now it seemed that he’d retreated where she couldn’t see him, let alone reach him.

Basta, you idiot! This was as life-changing to him as it was to her. He’d just been told he’d become a father for the first time. And to him, of all people, having a child within a solid, happy marriage, giving it what he’d never had, raising it between two loving parents, must be his foremost priority in life.

If their marriage was solid and happy.

“Congratulazioni, futura mamma.” She tried to sit up, throw herself in his arms. He stopped her. She almost started weeping again, at his care. That he didn’t take her in his arms. “No, don’t move. No more bouncing around, and no more work until the doctors say it’s one thousand percent safe.”

“As long as it’s not no more you, I’m fine with it.” She tried to quip, knew he must see the turmoil in her eyes. She saw nothing in his as he brushed her quivering lips with his own.

“We’ll see about that. Now rest, Clarissa.” He withdrew, and she felt as if he would never come back. He looked down at her for a long moment. Then he exhaled. “I have to get back to work, but anything you need, amore, just summon me. I’ll bring the whole world to you.”

But I just want you.

The cry congealed in her throat as he turned and walked away.

He’d said all the right things, was fussing over her health and comfort. But he hadn’t said how he felt about this. Not that he needed to. She’d never seen him look despondent. Now she had.

So he didn’t want a child that would tie him to her forever? But if he hadn’t wanted it, why hadn’t he used protection? Did he just want the baby to cement his claim to the D’Agostino family name, but would rather she didn’t come attached to it?

Was this how her mother had gone mad, destroyed her life and attempted to destroy the child of the man who couldn’t love her?

But no. She wasn’t her mother. She was herself, and no matter that she felt she was dying inside, she’d live for her child, love it more because it was his, too.