Chapter 4: Before the Wedding
Faye turned to look at her father.
"What did you just say?"
"He knew before the wedding," Alaric said.
"He came to me.
Six weeks before the ceremony.
He told me there was a possibility the child wasn't his.
He asked me to keep it quiet."
"And you—" Faye's voice broke.
She pressed her hand over her mouth for a moment, then dropped it.
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I told him he had one week to tell you himself.
He didn't."
Bastian's jaw tightened.
"I was going to—"
"You were going to what?" Faye's voice came back sharp.
"Raise another man's child and let me believe it was yours?
Let me stand in front of our families and—" She stopped.
She pressed both hands flat against the sides of her belly and breathed.
"Who is the father?"
Bastian said nothing.
"Who is he, Bastian?"
Bianca stood up.
"This is not the place—"
"Sit down, Bianca." Alaric's voice was quiet and final.
Bianca sat.
Faye walked around the table until she was standing directly in front of her husband.
She was shorter than him by nearly a foot, and pregnant, and she stood there like she was the only solid thing in the room.
"Tell me his name."
Bastian looked at the table.
"Tell me his name or I walk out of this house tonight and I don't come back."
Bastian looked up.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, not quite.
Something more calculated than guilt.
"It was Marco," he said.
The name landed differently on different people.
Several of the older family members shifted in their seats.
One man near the back of the room stood up and quietly left.
The door closed behind him without a sound.
Serena's head came up slowly.
Alaric's expression didn't change, but his hands, still folded on the table, pressed together slightly harder.
Faye shook her head.
"Marco who?"
Bastian looked at his father.
Alaric looked back at him.
"Tell her," Alaric said.
"Marco Voss," Bastian said.
"He was my father's business associate.
He's been working with the family for eleven years."
Faye turned to look at Alaric.
"You know him."
"Yes."
"Does he know about the baby?"
Alaric's pause was less than a second.
But Faye caught it.
"Dad.
Does Marco Voss know about my baby?"
"He does now," Alaric said.
"I informed him this morning."
The table erupted.
Three people spoke at once.
Bianca was on her feet again.
Bastian's chair scraped back hard against the floor.
"You had no right—" Bastian started.
"I had every right." Alaric's voice cut through everything else without rising.
"That child is not yours.
You lied to your wife, you lied to this family, and you came to me six weeks before your wedding and asked me to help you bury it.
I did not help you bury it.
I waited."
"You waited three months," Bastian said.
"You let this go on for three months."
"I waited to see if you would find your conscience on your own." Alaric looked at his son without blinking.
"You didn't.
You pushed a pregnant woman out of a chair instead."
The room went still again.
Faye had not moved.
She stood in the same spot, hands at her sides now, looking at the floor between her feet.
"Where is he?" she said.
"Marco Voss.
Where is he right now?"
Alaric looked at her carefully.
"Why?"
"Because I want to know if the man whose child I'm carrying knows my name."
The silence that followed that sentence was the longest one yet.
Alaric reached into his jacket one more time.
He placed a phone on the table, screen-up.
There was a message on it.
Sent that morning.
The contact name at the top read: Marco V.
Faye leaned forward and read it.
Her face didn't collapse.
It went very still instead — the kind of still that comes after something has already broken and the person hasn't decided yet what to do with the pieces.
She straightened.
She looked at her father-in-law.
"He's coming here, isn't he."
It wasn't a question.
May you like
Alaric nodded once.
From somewhere beyond the closed doors of the dining room, the front gate buzzer sounded.
