The dark and cold and the fear is preying on my mind. If Dante would have appeared right then, I would have thrown myself into his arms unhesitatingly. I’ve missed him so, so, so badly it felt like an organ torn out of my body. I would have blurted out the news about the pregnancy—it would have been the first words out of my mouth.

But the longer I wait, the more I become confused and upset that he hasn’t come. He promised to meet me at midnight. He said he would be here. I was sure I could count on him—sure he wouldn’t keep me waiting even a moment. It’s past midnight now, past 12:30. What could possibly be keeping him away?

Then I start to wonder if this is how it’s always going to be?

That’s what my father said, and my mother. They told me if I stayed with Dante, I’d have a life of perpetual danger and fear. They said there could be no happy ending with a man like that. That he would bring violence and crime into my life, no matter how hard he tried to hide it away from me.

And now I’m starting to realize that this pregnancy changes everything . . .

If I keep this baby . . . what kind of life will it have?

What kind of father?

I might be willing to risk my own safety to be with Dante . . . but would I risk the safety of my child?

I have visions of criminals breaking into our house in the middle of the night, bent on revenge.

Or what about a police SWAT team? It only takes one stray bullet to snuff out a life . . . especially if that life is particularly small and vulnerable.

My heart is racing, faster and faster.

I need to vomit again. I’m continually sick, dizzy, aching. Shivering with cold.

How could Dante fail me like this? He promised me . . .

Maybe his promises don’t mean much.

We’ve only known each other a few months. I thought we were soulmates. I thought I knew him.

But the man I knew wouldn’t leave me waiting for an hour in a dark park, all alone. Not when I begged him to come.

I should leave. What if someone mugs me? I don’t just have myself to think about anymore. I haven’t decided whether to keep this baby or not, not entirely, but right now it seems like the most important thing in the world. Like I walked into this deserted place carrying something unbearably precious and fragile.

I’m just at the point of fleeing from the gazebo when I hear a sound—much louder than any cat or squirrel. Crashing through the bushes, headed right for me.

My body stiffens like petrified wood, and I clutch my hands over my mouth, trying not to scream.

A hulking figure leaps into the gazebo—soot-blackened and covered in blood. Wild eyes stare out of his face, eyes and teeth horribly white against his filthy skin.

I scream, so loud that it tears my throat.

“Simone!” he cries, reaching for me with his massive hands.

I understand that it’s Dante, but I back away from him, still shrieking.

His hands are covered in blood, every inch of them. His knuckles are swollen, cut, bleeding, and the whole of his hands are drenched—not from those cuts, but from something else. From someone else.

“Don’t touch me!” I scream, staring at those awful hands.

Those are the hands of a criminal. A killer.

“I’m so sorry . . .” he says.

“Don’t touch me! I . . . I . . .”

Everything I had planned to say to him has flown out of my head. All I can see is his battered face, his bloodied hands, the snarl still baring his teeth. I see the unmistakable evidence of violence. Evidence of the life he leads.

A life that can’t include a child.

“I’m going away tomorrow,” I say, through numb lips. “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

Dante stands perfectly still, his hands falling to his sides. “You don’t mean that,” he says.

I don’t. I don’t mean it. But I have to do it.

“This is over between us,” I tell him. “We’re done.”

He looks stunned. Dazed, even. “Please, Simone . . .”

I shake my head, silent tears coursing down my cheeks. “I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.”

He swallows hard, his lip split and swollen. “I love you,” he says.

For once, the one and only time, his voice sounds gentle. It tears my heart in half like paper. Tears it again and again.

I could stay. I would stay, if it were just me.

But it’s not just me anymore.

I turn and run away from him.

18

Dante

I don’t believe she’ll actually go.

I think she loves me. So I think she’ll stay.

But I’m wrong.

She flies to London the next morning.

And doesn’t come back again.

19

Simone

Maybe if I wasn’t so cold and scared that night, I would have made a different choice.

Maybe if I wasn’t so sick in London . . .

I had hyperemesis gravidarum throughout the pregnancy. Vomiting twenty, thirty times a day. I got so skinny I was nothing but bones. The doctors put a permanent IV line into me, so I wouldn’t die of dehydration.

I was hospitalized in the second trimester.

The baby was born early in the third, at thirty-four weeks. He was tiny. God, so very, very tiny, only 5 lbs 2 oz. He didn’t cry as he came out. He looked blue and wizened. Barely alive.

The birth was nightmarish. They gave me nitrous gas for the pain, but I had a poor reaction to it. I started to hallucinate—I thought the nurses were demons, and they were trying to tear me apart. I thought the doctor was a monster wearing the mask of a human.

I thought Dante came to the hospital, but he only stood in the doorway, glaring at me. I begged him to forgive me for leaving. For not telling him about the baby. He wouldn’t speak to me—he only stared at me with a cold, furious expression.

After the birth, when I’m in my right mind again, I believe that was the one thing I saw that was actually true: Dante won’t forgive me for this, if he ever finds out. Never, ever.

My parents come to the hospital. They hadn’t known I was pregnant—I made Serwa swear not to tell them. Mama cries and asks why I kept such an awful secret. Tata scowls and demands to know if Dante is aware of what he did to me.

“No,” I whisper. “I haven’t spoken to him. He doesn’t know.”

Because the baby was small and having trouble breathing, they put him in the NICU, in an incubator. I’ve barely seen him or held him at all. All I know is that he had a lot of curly black hair and a tiny, limp body.

The nurses keep giving me drugs. I’m sleeping all the time. When I wake up, the baby’s never in the room.

On the third day I wake, and my parents are sitting next to the bed. There’s nobody else in the room—no nurses, or Serwa.

“Where’s the baby?” I ask them.

Mama glances over at my father. Her face looks pale and drawn.

They’re both dressed nicely—Mama in a blazer and skirt set, Tata in a suit. Not exactly formal, but the closest thing to it. As if they have an event to attend. Or maybe this is the event.

I feel disgusting by comparison—unwashed, unkempt, in the cheap cotton hospital smock.