Page 72 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“He won’t be,” said Dario.

They were both so certain that when the ultrasound tech found the anatomy she was looking for and said, “It’s a boy,” Lyssia only smiled. “I knew it. I knew it was your son.”

But Dario stood up, and suddenly looked pale. Ashen. And then he walked out of the room, leaving Lyssia sitting there staring at the ultrasound tech.

“Is he okay?” the woman asked.

“No. I think he has a load of childhood trauma that he isn’t quite sure how to work through. But I’m going to need him to start doing it.”

Dario was out on the streets. The high-rise looming over him, and people wandering all around him. It was like when he’d come here for the first time. It was like when he’d been a boy. Lost in the shuffle, lost in the madness. It was everything he was afraid of. Everything he had escaped.

A son.

He had known that there was a possibility of that, and had even felt certain along with Lyssia when she had said that. A son.

A little dark-eyed boy who would be like him.

It wrenched him. Tore him open.

He was going to have to relive this. Have to revisit it, and there was no getting away from it. He had made a decision to care for his son. But right then, he knew it wasn’t enough. He knew he wasn’t enough.

Lyssia had stood there, with truth shining out from her eyes when she had said that she now understood she was enough. Always, and forever. That her love was sufficient. How did he get there? How?

He knew the answer. But he hated the answer. He had to demolish the walls inside of himself, he didn’t have another choice. He had to tear it all down. He had to find a way.

But the only way to do it was to make himself vulnerable, and the thought of that made him...

They lived in a home together. Happy home. And God, he had one of those before, and it had been wrenched away from him. It was hideous. To love someone as he had, and to lose her. And worse still, to love his father as he had and lose him.

To have him choose to walk away. Could he love Lyssia? Could he love his son?

Would it be enough?

How can you not?

Of course he had to. Of course he did. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.

Why was he wandering the streets like a homeless child? Why did he feel like a homeless child?

He was the same boy he’d always been.

Raphael.

He pushed that away. That name. That part of himself.

Raphael.

He was him again.

He had not escaped.

He was out there, alone. Abandoned.

And then he turned, and he saw her. Walking down the sidewalk, and it was as the crowd parted. Lyssia. Still coming for him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.

“Dario,” she said. “What... What’s wrong?”

“A son,” he said. “I will have a wife and a son, and I will fail him. I will fail you. I don’t know... My father loved my mother too much, and then he couldn’t bear it when she died. How can I be a good father, and a good husband?”

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