After He Blinded Me The Don Begged For Forgiveness Chapter 05
Nausea churned in my stomach. I wiped my mouth.
“Fine. Get out, then I’ll get out.”
The strength drained from me. I turned and walked away.
I knocked on the door of my best friend, Sofia.
I told her everything, sobbing.
But she only kept frowning.
“Anna, I have to say it—you’re being so unreasonable.”
“Serena’s a good person. She just wanted a child with Soren. Did you really have to react like that?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What did you say?”
“You’re being so cruel. Asking Serena to abort it—that’s a life, you know.”
“She hasn’t fought you for anything since you got pregnant. You’re making too big a scene.”
She didn’t even look up. She kept flipping through the Tiffany baptismal gift catalog in her hands.
“Speaking of which, when Serena gives birth, what should I get her for a baptism gift?”
I looked at the new Cartier bracelet on Sofia’s wrist.
It was the gift Serena had given her last month for her birthday.
In that instant, I understood. Serena had already woven her net through every connection in the Costello family.
Even my closest friend of years had taken her side.
I left Sofia’s apartment.
I stood on the street, and realized I had nowhere to go.
Out of spite, I went to the café on the corner to buy a cappuccino, only to find I didn’t even have five dollars in my phone wallet.
I sat at the East River pier.
From sunset to sunrise.
The baby kicked. In silence, I went home.
Soren grabbed me by the arm, looked me over carefully.
“Where did you go?”
“I looked for you all night.”
“You’re acting out, and the baby is suffering for it.”
I didn’t look at him. I just held out my hand.
“Your phone.”
He hesitated, then handed it to me.
I entered the passcode.
My birthday. Wrong.
Our anniversary. Wrong again.
He pressed his lips together. “0927.”
Serena’s birthday.
My fingertip paused, then unlocked the phone. I transferred ten thousand dollars to myself.
Soren’s pupils shrank. He handed me a black card.
“No limit. Buy whatever you want.”
“Anna, stop running away.”
I took the card. Its sharp edges bit into my palm.
He reached out to hold me, and I dodged him.
I turned and went back to our room.
I just stayed there quietly, asking nothing more about him or Serena.
I watched my child grow inside me, and waited only for her to be born.
One afternoon, Serena came to find me.
She was wearing Soren’s clothes again. She forced a smug little smile.
“Anna, you don’t know yet, do you? Soren says once the babies are born, he’s going to come take care of me.”
“I just said I was a little tired, and he wouldn’t stop fussing over me. I heard you’ve been vomiting up bile—he didn’t say a thing about that, did he?”
“How could Soren be like this? If it were me, I wouldn’t have the heart to let a girl suffer like that.”
I was about to turn away when I heard her shriek as she went tumbling down the stairs.
“Anna, I really just came to keep you company.”
“Even if you don’t believe nothing happened between me and Soren, how could you do this to my babies?”
“Serena!”
The next second, Soren’s stinging slap landed across my face. He bent down and scooped Serena into his arms.
“Anneliese, you really disappoint me.”
I watched his frantic figure disappear, and wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth.
That night, he came in with a dark face and grabbed my hand.
“You caused Serena to go into premature labor. Her eyes—she’s blind now, do you know that?!”
“Since you have it in you to be this cruel, you’re going to make it up to her.”
“I didn’t do anything. She fell on her own!” I shook my head violently.
“Still lying. She isn’t like you—she’s not so cruel, not so calculating.”
He dragged me toward the door.
The fight went out of me. I dropped to my knees and begged him.
“Soren, I’m begging you—not like this. I’m pregnant. I can’t go.”
“Wait until the baby’s born. Please.”
“Three more months. Just three more months.”
I trembled all over with sobs.
He gave a cold laugh.
“Wait? And what about Serena? Can she wait?”
“You dare bring up the child? Someone as vile as you—are you even fit to bear my child?”
He ignored my body. He dragged me into the operating room of the family’s private clinic in Queens.
I watched Dr. Romano walk toward me carrying a bottle of industrial acid.
Helpless, I wept hot tears.
The moment the liquid splashed into my eye sockets, it was as if a thousand red-hot needles had been driven into me.
The stench of melting flesh stung my nose. Tears mixed with dark red blood, running down my cheeks.
Once, he used to brush his thumb gently over my eyelids. He said my eyes were like the Costello emeralds, passed down three generations. He said I was the rightful Donna.
But now, all of it was gone.
When it was over, he was afraid I would harm Serena again. He had them ship me off to the old estate in the Hudson Valley.
I was locked inside.
Cold. Damp.
He never came to see me. Not once.
The day I gave birth, I gave everything I had.
It took an entire day and night.
The baby came—but she had no breath in her.
I held her small body and stumbled out of the estate.
That day, the entire neighborhood was handing things out for free.
Because Serena’s twins had just been baptized at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.
Don Soren, following old Sicilian custom, was giving alms throughout the city. Every poor person in town was to be fed.
Thanks to her, I was able to collect an old lace blanket from a church soup kitchen.
Just enough to wrap around my tiny daughter—the one who would never open her eyes.
That day was the day of Serena’s twins’ baptism.
It was also the day Caroline died.
Fate was cruel as a carefully arranged Mass.
Soren’s hoarse voice pulled me out of my memories. He was still trying to convince me to come home.
“Anna, I just want you and the child to come back with me, and live the life we should have lived.”
I tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“The child?”
Soren went on.
“The doctor in the Hudson Valley told me it was a girl. She’d be four by now, wouldn’t she? I picked out a name for her long ago. Caroline. Caroline Costello.”
“Caroline Costello.”
“She has to come home eventually.”
“They didn’t tell you, then—”
“That the child has been dead for years?”