Chapter 2 - Adrian Had Known Before Mara Became Pregnant
Mara left the Cross mansion with Massimo ten minutes later.
She did not ask Adrian another question.
Not on the driveway.
Not with Sienna watching.
Not while her baby moved beneath her hand and every instinct told her to get somewhere safe first.
Massimo drove her to his house.
A twenty-minute trip.
Mara spent nineteen of those minutes staring out the passenger window.
Finally:
“What did you mean?”
Massimo kept both hands on the wheel.
“Mara—”
“What did you mean?”
“I need you calm.”
“Don’t tell me to be calm.”
He glanced at her.
She had inherited that tone from him.
Massimo exhaled.
“Three days ago I received documents from Adrian’s former urologist.”
Mara stared.
“Why?”
“Because I asked questions.”
“About my husband’s medical records?”
“I didn’t receive his whole record. I received a document he had previously authorized for an insurance application connected to Bellini Capital.”
Mara’s confusion deepened.
Adrian had briefly joined a Bellini family-backed development venture before their marriage. Medical underwriting had been part of a large key-person insurance application.
Massimo continued.
“The report was four years old.”
“And?”
Massimo’s jaw tightened.
“It said Adrian had undergone a vasectomy.”
The car suddenly felt too small.
Mara stared at him.
“No.”
“Mara—”
“No.”
“He had the procedure when he was thirty.”
“That’s impossible.”
Adrian was thirty-five now.
They had begun trying for a baby two years earlier.
For eight months, Mara tracked ovulation.
Took supplements.
Changed doctors.
Cried in bathrooms.
Blamed herself.
Adrian had held her through every negative pregnancy test.
Then they went to a fertility clinic.
Doctors told them Adrian’s sperm count was unusually low.
Not zero.
Low.
Or that was what Mara had been told.
Eventually, after an intrauterine insemination cycle, Mara became pregnant.
She remembered Adrian crying when the test turned positive.
He knelt on the bathroom floor and kissed her stomach.
“My baby.”
Mara pressed a hand over her mouth now.
“A vasectomy can reverse itself.”
“Rarely.”
“He could have had it reversed.”
“There’s no reversal documented.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Massimo’s voice softened.
“That’s why I said might.”
Mara turned toward him.
“Then why was Adrian afraid?”
Massimo did not answer immediately.
Because that was the question neither of them could avoid.
If Adrian believed there was an innocent explanation—
May you like
why had he looked terrified?
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