Page 37 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

She had sat down in her room and looked at the framed photo she kept of her mother.

She could barely remember the way that her mother’s voice had sounded now. She remembered her hands. She remembered how soft they were. How it had felt when she touched her.

She remembered that she had felt so loved. So cherished always.

And then she was gone.

That was when Lyssia had known that she was going to have the baby. Because that ghost of a memory was the most real thing she had ever experienced, and she wanted that. She wanted a child to love. She wanted to be a mother. And yes, there were going to be... Some issues. She was going to have to tell Dario. She was going to have to tell her father. She had decided that she could handle it. She had just made a very real business plan, and she had decided to attack custody the same way.

And so now here she was. It seemed a lot more reasonable in its inception. Now it seemed a little bit over the top.

“Lyssia...” He was speechless. She had renderedDariospeechless.

It had been a pretty shocking time for her, so it seemed fair.

“I didn’t quite know the best way to tell you, but I thought that it would be best to speak when I had everything planned. So this is my proposal for custody...”

“Custody?” he asked, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Yes. Custody.”

Above all else, as she had sat in that dark room and thought about her child. She had realized that she wanted her child to be proud of her. If she was going to share custody with Dario that meant that when the child was with their father, they would only be with him. When they were with her, they would only be with her. And she didn’t want a child going from their wonderful, accomplished, type A father to a mother who wasn’t as successful.

And that was when she had decided that she was going to get a contract with Dario’s company too. Because she wanted her child to be able to be proud of her. It felt important. And that was holding her steady now. She wanted to be admirable. And this, she felt, was admirable. She was facing everything head-on, she was being mature and adult. She was owning her responsibilities.

“Yes,” she said again. “Custody.Because of course we need to make sure that we have an amicable arrangement in place...”

“As if we will be... Co-parenting?”

“Yes,” she said. “What else would we do? Unless... If you don’t want to be part of the child’s life, that is okay. I’m fully prepared to—”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Under no circumstances will any child of mine be abandoned by the father. And under no circumstances will any child of mine not live in my household. You will marry me, Lyssia.”

She stood there, staring at him. And then, he was standing, and she had to look up, quite a bit up, to make eye contact with him. She was thankful the desk was between them because the impact of him was overwhelming. The memory of that night over a month ago was burned into her.

She would’ve thought that being with him like that might have demystified him. That she would feel... If not ambivalent, then at least like it was all settled. But instead, she felt like she was dangerously close to an electrical wire when she looked at him.

Like she was in danger of being shocked. And worse, like she might want to be.

She was trying to keep her guard up. Trying to keep herself from crumbling.

“We don’t need to marry,” she said.

“I do not want my child growing up in a broken home.”

“My home was broken,” she said. “It wasn’t my mother’s fault that she died. Our child will have both parents. That isn’t a bad thing. And we’ve known each other for years. Surely we can be civil.”

“We can be, but I won’t be. I want to have our child living with married parents under one roof.”

“Why?” she asked, feeling all of her control slipping.

She just couldn’t handle this.

She had come to a place where she thought that she could do this. If anything, she had been worried that he wouldn’t want the child. It had never occurred to her that he would demand that she marry him.

How could she...

How could she marry him? They weren’t in a relationship. And she was just starting out with her business, and she was getting used to the idea of using her connections. But to be her father’s daughter, and Dario’s wife...

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