Page 37 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince

Just the muffled sound of shoes against polished tile and the occasional rustle of paper from behind frosted glass.

I sit on a chair that was clearly made for function, not comfort, its upholstery stiff beneath me, my coat folded over my lap with a neatness that doesn’t belong to nerves, only to the need for control.

A nurse had taken my blood, asked me questions, made polite small talk without expecting answers.

I responded when I needed to, nothing more.

When the doctor enters, he closes the door behind him gently, setting a file on the table with a kind of practiced neutrality that always feels worse than concern.

He doesn’t look hesitant, but he does pause long enough before speaking to make it clear he knows what I came here to hear.

"You’re pregnant," he says with the same tone I’ve heard men use when reading out an ordinary bit of news, as if this is a result on paper, not a truth that will alter the trajectory of a life.

I don’t flinch, nor do I make a scene of reacting.

I only meet his gaze and nod, the barest concession to the finality of it.

He continues speaking, something about hormone levels and viability, and I absorb only what matters: six weeks along, healthy, no irregularities detected.

When he finishes, I thank him and leave.

The city has not paused for my reckoning.

The streets are crowded, the sun thin behind layers of drifting exhaust and morning mist, and Nuova Speranza pulses with the same sharp rhythm it always has.

It’s a city that long ago stopped pretending it was run by politicians.

I don’t look at the test results again.

I already know them.

They are written into my body now, clear and irrefutable.

I return home only briefly, long enough to change into something darker, sharper, less revealing, although I’m much, much too early for anyone to make sense of anything.

This is done more out of a sense to protect myself.

Then I call the driver.

I give him an address near the industrial port, one of the old café-restaurants that’s been half-refurbished into something sleek and modern, with enough glass to let the sun in but enough distance from the street to avoid attention.

I ask Dante to come if he has the time, but don’t tell him anything else over the phone.

I need to see who he is when the idea of permanence is not a game or a metaphor.

I need to know what kind of future he can offer without realizing that’s what I’m asking him for.

He arrives late by only a few minutes, dressed like he didn’t try at all, and still manages to draw every eye from the hostess to the bartender.

He doesn’t smile when he sees me, but he does tilt his head as he approaches, already playing at being amused.

"You planning to ambush me every month now, or should I start blocking off my calendar?" he asks, sliding into the seat across from me and stretching his legs out as if the world belongs to him and I’m only borrowing a fraction of it.

"I needed your opinion on something," I reply, lifting my glass of club soda but not drinking. "A hypothetical."

He raises an eyebrow. "Is this the kind of hypothetical where someone dies at the end, or the kind where someone ends up married?"

"Do you ever see yourself being a father?"