Page 104 of Frozen Heart
He looks up from his phone, his eyes frantic.
“You… You gave it away.”
I did.
Sent an email to the exhibition curator, as soon as I got home from the Annex, agreeing to extend the loan, with privileges to take the necklace out of the country. And I indicated my willingness to make it a strings-free donation, proposing a meeting to discuss it on Monday.
“A diamond worth about one hundred million dollars… You gave it up just because she asked you to?”
Actually, at a private auction, it would probably fetch twice as much. But that’s neither here nor there at this point.
“Why?” Bartholomew snarls. “Why would you do it?”
I hold his gaze.
“That’s it? You’re just going to sit there, saying nothing?” Rushing across the room, way too fast for someone his age, he grabs the lapels of my jacket. “Why would you do it?” He tries to yank me around. “I want to hear you say it, Adriano! Say it, damn it!”
I wrap my hands around his wrists and shove the enraged man off me.
“Lost cause,” he pants, shaking his head. “You’re a lost cause.”
At long last, we agree on something.
I grab my coat off the recliner and head toward the front door. The knob’s in my hand, the door cracked open, when Bartholomew’s words stop me cold.
“She turned you down,” he repeats. “You finally made your interest in her known, but she turned you down. Now, you’re trying to buy her affection by following through with her idea to donate the necklace.”
My fist tightens around the handle.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Did she tell you she hates you? Is that what this is about?”
“Worse,” I rasp.
“How could something be worse than that?”
It can. Many emotions, including hatred, can evolve. Change into something else.
I pull the door open all the way and look behind me. Barty is standing in the middle of the room, his shoulders sagging, and there’s a defeated expression on his face.
“Last night, my Little Iris toldhimthat she loves him,” I say. “And that means she could never fall in love withme.”
Sometime soon, she’ll discover the man at the Annex is me, pretending to be someone I’m not.
Honoring my wife’s wish for the diamond necklace to be given away is a small price to pay for her imminent heartbreak.
My heart has grown hummingbird wings. Except it’s booming in my head like rolling thunder. I can’t look away from the two pink lines in the small window of the pregnancy test.
“Not possible.” My choked words seem to echo inside the empty hospital bathroom.
Only…it is.
I haven’t taken my birth control pills for the past two months. I forgot to refill them, and then kept on “forgetting.” The excuses I made to myself were far too dumb, but they were working. The truth is, I didn’t want to take the pills. I… I loved the idea of having my husband’s child. A part of him. One that would love me. Unlike Adriano, who is obviously incapable of returning my feelings. Isn’t that why he keeps ignoring me at home? Why he continues to pretend at the Annex? Or maybe he’s like the other guys who frequent the gentlemen’s club? Maybe he goes there to fulfill his desires, pleasures he’s not interested in sharing with his wife?
Oh God, I’ll have to confront him. I’ll have to tell him I know it’s been him all this time.
I wipe the tears that have been threatening to spill away and rush out of the bathroom.
“Mrs. Ruffo?”
