Page 94 of Wretched Choices

I search her face. “I thought you were in Europe.”

She smiles. “I was, but I flew back the same day I was informed what happened to you.”

“How did you find out?”

“Salvatore called me. He said you need someone by your side when you wake up.” I nod. Sadness overwhelms me. Did he call her because he didn’t want to be by my side?

“Until you woke up, he never left you, not for a moment.” I try to feel something, but my heart is too broken. Where is he now? “He was so worried. Until the moment you woke up, he was unbearable. I even think he made a few nurses cry,” she jokes.

I search for the flutter in my heart at the mention of his torment, knowing he cared. But I can’t feel a thing.

He isn’t here to tend to my broken heart.

He isn’t here because he broke it.

He broke it with the words of hatred toward the child I lost.

He broke it with false promises and the hope he gave me.

I feel emptiness inside my belly and my heart.

Can something so broken be fixed?

thirty-eight

Salvatore

Isabella came home one week after she woke up, and I was the coward that couldn’t face her. Gabriel and Cecilia went to the hospital and drove her home.

I stayed in the shadows, watching her from afar. Watching her cry in her sleep and calling for her baby. Our baby.

I’ve watched her cry so many times in the last few days. I just watched and blamed myself because I was a coward who hurt her. I told her hurtful things instead of being kind and good to her. I was led by my hate toward my father and the things he did.

She has been home for three days now, and I’ve stayed away.

I felt pain too. Maybe not in the same way. Nevertheless I was hurt, angry.

I felt pain for us and what we could have had.

I felt the pain of the things we lost and all because of my ignorance and stubbornness. Because of the promise I shouldn’t have given.

I never wanted to be a father, and I said bad things to her. But that’s the thing; when you lose something, you know the value of it.

Was it worth it?

Was my hatred for my father and the vow I gave him worth losing everything?

I lost something too that day. I lost myself again. I lost my future and everything I could have had.

That’s why I can’t face Isabella. This is all my fault.

That’s why I started to drink, with the hope of drowning my sorrows and guilt.

It doesn’t matter if I’m a CEO or the don of Cosa Nostra. It matters that I’m the coward towards the woman I love. The woman who lost my child. The child I didn’t want. A child that could have been my future.

I need time. Time to get my shit together.

I just hope when I do, it will not be too late.

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