Dante: Chapter 29

“I just saw Kat. She looks much better,” Maximo says as he takes the seat on the opposite side of my desk.

“Yeah,” I say with a sigh that shakes my bones. Even the mention of her name makes the guilt surge in my chest as though it’s going to crush me.

“You did what you had to, compagno.”

“The baby could have died, Max. She could have died. I just left her there.”

“You didn’t just leave her. You had Maria taking her food and keeping an eye on her.”

“She tried to tell me Kat was sick, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought it was some ploy to get my attention. If Joey hadn’t…”

“But she did and Kat and the baby are both fine. You had your reasons, D. She tried to run out on you with your kid. What if she’d made it?”

I grind my teeth and my jaw aches in protest. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if she’d managed to get away from me, so I change the subject. “We saw the baby, you know? They did an internal ultrasound and we saw it on a screen. I mean, you could hardly see anything but a tiny blob, but its heart was beating strong.”

“That must have been something.”

“It was,” I say, remembering the look on Kat’s face and how she held onto my hand as tears ran down her face. She deserves so much better than I give her. “You know why she tried to leave?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer me. He leans back in his chair and lets me talk.

“Because I told her that when I no longer had any use for her, I’d hand her over to my men to do whatever they please. She thought that being pregnant would mean I had no use for her, because I made her believe I was only ever interested in fucking her. I used that because I knew it was her biggest fear. Not death but being used like that. I told her that to keep her in line, Max. What kind of person does that?”

“The kind of person you have to be every day of your goddamn life,” Maximo reminds me. “You didn’t know she was going to end up pregnant with your kid.”

“Stop making excuses for me,” I snap at him.

“Fine,” he snaps back. “You want me to tell you that it’s been clear you’ve had a thing for this woman from the moment she threw a baseball bat at our heads? You want me to tell you that you should have been a little more honest with her about everything so she wouldn’t have been terrified to tell you that you’d knocked her up? Because I can do that too, but none of it matters, D. All you can control is what you do from here on out.”

“She fucking hates me.” I sigh, recalling the way she looked at me when she woke up in that hospital bed. Sure, her fake smile was in place as soon as she realized where she was and what was going on, but that first few seconds when she woke up and stared at me with nothing but terror in her eyes… I don’t think we can ever recover from that.

“Have you told her about the wedding yet?”

“Fuck, no. Now is not the right time.”

“So what happens now? You got to do all that baby stuff? Could Kat get sick again?”

“She has appointments with an OB GYN in a few weeks. She’ll still have the morning sickness, but she has some meds to help with it, and as long as she eats little and often, that seems to stave off the worst of the nausea. She won’t get sick like she did before anyway. But if she can’t keep the fluids down, I have to take her back to the hospital.”

“It will all be fine, compagno. I know she’s pissed at you right now, but it will pass.”

“I fucking hope so, Max.”