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He Hid His Daughter for Six Years,I Lost Mine Because of Her
NovelShort
Hoàn thành
His old classmate from the university showed up that night drunk out of her mind, clutching my arm and sobbing: "I destroyed someone's marriage. I'm carrying his child. I'll go to prison for this… b...
Chương (4)
第1章
His old classmate from the university showed up that night drunk out of her mind, clutching my arm and sobbing:
"I destroyed someone's marriage. I'm carrying his child. I'll go to prison for this… but I love him so much it's killing me. All I ever wanted was a family with him."
I believed her. The pity nearly drove me mad. I drank with her until I was coughing blood, and they rushed me straight to the hospital.
But when I woke, she had vanished without a trace.
I thought she was desperate, cornered. I called in every favor I had, begged people I barely knew, trying to pull her out of whatever darkness had swallowed her. Because years ago she had saved Dante's life at the cost of her own blood, and I could not turn my back on that debt.
Five years passed before I found them.
I was standing outside the gates of a parish school, and I saw her rise on her toes and kiss the man in front of her.
"Dante, thank you for being so generous. For taking care of both families all this time. For giving Lucia a whole, complete love."
He smiled and accepted it, his eyes soft with a tenderness I had never once seen directed at me.
They looked like something out of a painting. And my heart ached until I thought it would stop.
Because that man was my husband.
——
I pressed my hand against the wall to keep from falling, and the tears came one by one, sliding down my face in silence.
Dante reached out and gently stroked Lena Winslow's hair. Then he crouched and lifted the little girl into his arms.
"You two. Always sneaking me out here behind Lena's back whenever she's giving me trouble."
Lena Winslow looped her arm through his without a shred of shame, her voice sweet and petulant:
"She's had you all to herself for years. Am I not even allowed to come find you with our daughter?"
Then something crossed her mind, and she let go of his arm, stomping her foot in a show of pretty anger.
"Honestly, Dante. Have you no shame?"
"Lucia's already in grade school. If she still doesn't have a father who'll stand beside her publicly, people will talk. The other families will talk."
"Of course, if you'd rather not, I can always marry someone else."
Dante's brow creased. He stood frozen.
His hand tightened instinctively around Lucia's small fingers, and he shook his head.
"That's not happening. I'm never leaving Lena. Never."
"You were the one who climbed into my bed that night. I did right by you. I claimed this girl as mine, I even refused to let Lena carry my child so there would be no questions."
"What more do you want? You want my whole household destroyed?"
His voice rose. In this world, a man who raised his voice had already lost something, and the air around the school gates shifted with it. Lena Winslow flinched, her composure cracking.
Before she could find words, Lucia tilted her head back and wailed.
"Daddy doesn't want me anymore. Daddy doesn't want me…"
The child's ribbon hung limp and still around her fingers.
Dante looked down at the daughter who had not yet grown into the weight of the name she carried. The hard line of his brow softened.
He crouched and gathered her into his arms. His hand went to his coat pocket with practiced ease and produced a lollipop, slipping it between her lips.
"Daddy's not leaving you…"
Hope flared in Lena Winslow's eyes. She wet her lower lip and smiled.
"Dante. Does that mean… you'll leave her?"
I couldn't listen anymore. I pressed my back against the wall and slid down until I was crouching on the ground.
My heart felt like it had been pierced by a single needle, thin and precise and unbearable.
They say the one who betrays a true heart will swallow ten thousand silver needles.
So why was I the one in pain?
I looked down. In my hands was the letter from the clinic, the confirmation that the clandestine fertility treatments had finally worked. The result was printed in clean black ink: positive. My tears fell onto the paper, one drop, then another, warping the words.
I wanted to tell him. We have a child now.
But he already had a family out here. A whole, happy, hidden family I had never known about.
I don't know how long I stayed there before I pressed my palms against the wall and forced myself to stand.
I walked the streets for what felt like hours. Eventually my phone rang.
In the three seconds it took me to reach for it, I prayed. I prayed that what I had seen was not real, that there was still some other explanation.
But when I opened the screen, it was Dante's name.
Even through the text, I could sense how carefully he had chosen his words:
Lena, there's something I'd like to discuss with you.
I had already known. I had known from the moment I watched him lift that little girl into his arms.
But when I read that single line, my heart still skipped a beat.
My thumb drifted to my ring finger. I pressed the band until the skin beneath it went white.
I stayed crouched at the curb all night. I bought a bottle and drank alone, speaking my grief to the empty air as if it might answer.
第2章
The next day, I had no idea how Dante found me.
He stood in front of me and slipped off his coat, draping it over my shoulders. I looked up at him and forced a smile.
"Dante, that thing you wanted to talk about. I agree."
"What I mean is, you're free."
He smiled bitterly, and his hands went still.
"Lena… so you already guessed."
He lowered his head, opened another bottle, sat down beside me, and drank.
"It's not what you think. I just don't want to be trapped in this marriage anymore. I want to live my own life."
"But Lena, this isn't about not wanting you. I'll come back and remarry you."
I almost laughed. In his eyes, was I really that easy to fool?
Then again, he'd been fooling me for six full years.
That year, Lena Winslow had shown up at my house, drunk out of her mind, and told me she'd slept with some man and was carrying his child. Before that, back in the Catholic university lab, Dante had nearly been disfigured in an explosion. It was Lena Winslow who had stepped forward and pulled him from the wreckage. So I wanted to help her. But she'd buried her face and drained an entire bottle of wine.
"Don't bother. This is something I want to take to my grave."
And only now did I learn the truth: her child was Dante's.
They had deceived me again and again.
Two people, hiding it from me for six years.
I had gone to that discreet clinic countless times, let them push those thick needles into my belly. I hated myself for being so stupid, for believing every word he said.
Now I would rather he told me the truth to my face than be deceived one more time.
If he wanted a divorce, then I would give him his freedom.
I turned my head and slipped the ring off my finger. The motion felt natural, as though I'd rehearsed it in some quiet part of myself I hadn't known existed. I placed it in Dante's palm.
"This is the ring your mother gave me."
"Now it goes back where it belongs."
He stared at the ring, stunned, and something disbelieving flickered through his eyes.
"Lena Moretti." It was the first time he had ever called me by my full name. "I told you I'd come back and remarry you. Why don't you believe me?"
I searched his eyes, desperate to find the secret of his betrayal somewhere inside them. But there was nothing. Not a crack. Not a tell.
Dante, you really are that good at pretending.
Watching his expression twist, I gently pushed his hand away.
"I believe you."
"So… when do we sign the papers?"
He pressed his lips together in a smile, thinking I was being reasonable, and pulled me into his arms.
"Whenever you're ready. We can go anytime."
I closed my eyes, and the tears fell on their own.
After this was done, I, Lena Moretti, would belong only to myself.
He carried me back to the brownstone and, like always, had already cooked dinner. He pressed his face gently against mine, the clean scent of his sweat slipping into my nose.
"Lena, I'm going to shower. You eat first, alright?"
I sat at the table. The same dishes as always.
The snow peas were Lena Winslow's favorite.
And the braised pork trotters. The greasy kind I hated most.
He kept placing slick cuts of braised pork onto my plate. When I didn't touch them, he asked, "I thought this was your favorite?"
But the one who loved those dishes had only ever been Lena Winslow.
Looking at the food, I had no appetite left.
While I sat there, lost in thought, a knock sounded at the door.
I opened it and found the last person I expected. Lena Winslow, the woman who had vanished for six years.
She covered her mouth with one hand. Behind her, clutching a small doll with a ribbon twisted around her fingers, stood Lucia. Lena Winslow dropped to her knees in front of me with a heavy thud.
I had imagined her coming back a thousand times over the years.
But never once had I imagined she would appear as the other woman.
第3章
"Lena, you have to help me. I just got out of that place, and I have no one. No one."
"That man wants to take my child away from me. You're all I have left!"
She said it like it was the God's honest truth.
If I hadn't seen what I'd seen just moments before, I might have believed every word. I smiled, took one step forward, and blocked the doorway so neither of them could come any farther inside.
"Stop the act. I know everything."
"That year, the man who shared your bed was Dante. Wasn't it?"
Her fingers clawed the stone threshold, nails dragging until the skin split and blood seeped from the tips.
The pleading drained from her face like color from a dead man's cheeks. What replaced it was pure, undiluted hatred.
She braced a hand against the doorframe and rose slowly to her feet. Then she lifted her wrist and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with a deliberate, unhurried motion.
"If you already know, then why haven't you severed from Dante? You're content to watch me and my child be spat on? Humiliated?"
"All these years. Do you know how many times I've been called the kept woman? How many times Lucia came home from school crying because the other children said she was a bastard with no father?"
"You told me once you'd help me. Or have you forgotten that too?"
I laughed. I couldn't stand the sight of her face, the way she pushed forward as if she were owed something. I reached for the heavy door and started to close it.
But in the last second, she shoved Lucia's small hand into the gap.
Lucia screamed. A raw, piercing wail that bounced off the corridor walls. I tried to push the door open again, but it wouldn't budge, no matter how hard I threw my weight against it.
Listening to that child's broken crying, I couldn't stop myself from confronting Lena Winslow:
"She's your own daughter! You'd use your own child like this?!"
Her grip only tightened. Lucia was sobbing so hard she could barely draw breath.
"Six years ago, I carried that child for Dante. She's the one who keeps saying she wants a father." Her voice was flat, mechanical. "I'm granting her wish. I'm helping her."
She was insane. Completely, irreversibly insane.
Finally, her hands loosened.
But I fell hard. My back hit the floor and the impact traveled straight through me. In an instant, my stomach seized with a tightness so sharp it stole my vision.
I curled into the corner, both arms wrapped around my belly, holding on as if holding on could keep anything safe.
That was when Dante walked out of the bathroom, steam still clinging to his shoulders.
I reached out a hand toward him. My fingers were shaking.
"Save me…"
"Save my baby…"
He started toward me. Two steps, maybe three.
Then Lena Winslow's voice cracked through the hallway like a gunshot.
"Dante, can't you see what she's doing? She's playing you for sympathy."
The tears poured down her face, fast and unbroken, like beads snapping free from a string.
"Lucia came inside to find her. She was being sweet, being kind. And this woman, this viper, she slammed the door on my daughter's hand."
"Look at her fingers, Dante. Look. They're nearly broken."
Blood dripped steadily from the girl's small fingers. Dante's eyes went red.
His gaze drifted back to me. Slow. Heavy. The signet ring on his right hand was perfectly still.
"Lena Moretti." He bit down on every syllable of my name. "So you knew all along. You were just playing with me. Does that amuse you?"
I tried to explain. My mouth opened. Nothing came out. All I could do was press my hand against my stomach and cry out from the pain.
Dante noticed something was wrong. He took a step toward me.
Lena Winslow grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
This time it was Lucia who cried louder. She dropped to the floor, cradling her injured hand, and looked up at him.
"Papa… it hurts… it hurts so much."
One word. Papa. It stopped him cold.
He turned. He lifted Lucia into his arms and held her against his chest, turning her gently as if she might break further.
"Lucia, Papa already called the driver. He'll take you to the clinic. Just hold on, okay?"
Lucia nestled into his shoulder, quiet now, obedient. Her small head rested against him as though she had finally found the only safe place in the world.
I was losing feeling in my hands. The pain in my belly was swallowing everything else. The edges of the room softened, then blurred. My thumb pressed hard against my ring finger where the wedding band still sat, pressing and pressing until the skin beneath it went white, and then I couldn't feel that either.
第4章
Crumpled on the floor, Lena Winslow's shrill voice cut through the ringing in my ears:
"I did lie to you back then, but what did the child ever do wrong?"
"I protected you for all those years. You couldn't even share one man with me?"
"Besides, handing him off to someone else would be worse than handing him to me."
She decided she was the wronged party, and the tears came with sound.
Dante just looked down at me, cold as stone:
"Lena. What exactly are you performing for me? What is there left to perform?"
"Nobody here would hurt Lucia except you. Or are you going to claim her own mother did this to her?"
"You already knew the truth. So why stage this little scene?"
Their voices crashed over each other, one after the other.
I reached out, used the last strength I had:
"Dante, I'm carrying a child!"
Lena Winslow cut me off instantly:
"Lena Moretti, Dante is sterile. So where exactly did this child come from?"
"After he and I got together, he had the procedure done. How could you possibly be pregnant?"
Dante's brow creased slightly. His eyes shifted to me.
My throat locked. I couldn't force out a single word.
I tried to brace against the wall and stand. My legs wouldn't hold. I tried again. Nothing.
My fists clenched so tight the blood ran out between my fingers.
My face turned to the side. Tears fell, one by one.
This was my first child.
This baby, bought with how many needles, how many injections, how many silent mornings on that clinic table.
I couldn't let anything happen to him.
I gathered everything I had left and pushed myself up, palms flat against the floor, crawling toward Dante one step at a time.
"Dante."
"The baby was conceived through clandestine treatments. At the family clinic."
"This child... is your child."
The words had barely left my mouth when a stack of documents slid off the top of the refrigerator and hit the floor.
The two of them saw what had spilled out, and the color drained from both their faces.