REINA

Was this actually a coincidence?

I told myself yes. I forced myself to believe it as I followed Philip White into the lecture hall with the rest of the class, but something about it sat wrong in my chest. Not sharp enough to panic over. Not clear enough to name. Just there. Lingering.

Unsettling.

I slid into my seat at the middle row and placed my bag down slowly, my fingers brushing against the watch on my wrist. The one Celestino had given me.

Tracker. Panic button. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

I had wanted to laugh it off in the car. I was not laughing now because nothing about my situation was funny.

Laughable? yes. But it was absolutely not funny.

"Alright, everyone," Philip’s voice carried easily across the room as he dropped his notes on the desk. "I know I am not your usual professor, so let’s try not to make this painful for either of us."

A few students laughed. I didn’t. I kept my eyes on my notebook, pretending to flip through pages I was not reading.

"Business Statistics," he continued. "Sounds terrifying, I know. But I promise I will make it tolerable."

More laughter.

My pen hovered above the page.

Tolerable? That was a funny word. Nothing about my life felt tolerable right now.

Class felt like it lasted a thousand years.

I remained in my seat like a ragdoll, notebook open in front of me, pen hovering uselessly above the page. Professor Philip was at the front talking about regression analysis or correlation coefficients or some other thing that should have mattered, but none of it reached my brain. My mind was a storm, spinning so fast I could barely breathe.

What if I was pregnant? Really pregnant?

The question kept slamming into me like a wrecking ball. Domenico had come inside me so many times last night... Scratch that. He had been cumming inside me like I was his personal cumster since we started this whole thing. He had never for once used a protection, and I never thought of taking morning-after pills as well.

Raw, deep fuck sex with my father-in-law. No protection. No pulling out. Just him groaning my name and flooding me until I felt full and marked and stupid. I could still feel the ghost of his semen inside of me, warm, sticky, leaking slowly between my thighs even now. If I was carrying his child, what the hell was I supposed to do? Look Paolo in the eye and tell him his own father had knocked me up? Watch his face shatter? Or hide it forever and live with the lie eating me alive every single day?

I pressed my thighs together under the desk until it hurt. The soreness between my legs was a constant, throbbing reminder. Every tiny shift made me remember how many times I had begged Domenico not to stop. How many times I had whispered "fill me" like a desperate slut while his son’s ring sat heavy on my finger.

Domenico didn’t give a shit about his children. He had made that brutally clear. Rose and Ruby had given him babies and he had treated them like temporary conveniences. He had never loved them. He had never married them. He had used them, discarded them, and moved on without a backward glance. So why would he suddenly care if I ended up pregnant? He would probably look at me with that same cold detachment and say it was my problem to deal with.

The thought made my stomach churn so violently I had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up right there in class.

And Paolo... God, Paolo.

Gianpaolo had been nothing but a wonderful man and a supportive partner to me ever since we met. That had never changed, he had even been worried about me since last night Calestino called him to fill him in about my situation. He had seen genuinely worried about my safety.

He even told me he was wrapping things up and coming home soon. That he wanted his wife protected. Paolo’s voice from yesterday kept replaying in my head like a broken record, tired, sincere, cracking a little when he said I was the only good thing in his horrible life. He loved me. He actually loved me in his broken, clumsy way. And I had spent nights letting his father ruin me since he left. I had ridden Domenico until I couldn’t feel my legs. I had come on his face. I had let him fuck me against the window where the whole city could have seen.

I was the worst wife on the planet.

I shifted again in my seat. The watch Calestino had given me felt like a lead weight on my wrist. The small silver button on the side pressed into my skin like a constant warning. I kept my thumb hovering near it without realizing I was doing it. Just in case. Just in case someone was watching me right now.

And professor Philip?

Why was Professor Philip being so nice to me?

I glanced up. He was leaning against the podium, explaining some graph on the screen, but his eyes flicked to me again. He smiled, small, private, like we shared a secret no one else in the room could understand. It made my stomach flip in a way I didn’t like at all. He had bumped into me twice already this week.

He had helped me pick up my bag. He had called us soulmates as a joke. It was too friendly. Too easy. Too much after the hooded figure at my door, after Calestino sleeping on my couch, after Domenico’s confession about the women he never loved.

The class finally ended. Chairs scraped. Students packed up. Voices rose in a wave of relief. I shoved my notebook into my bag and stood quickly. I needed air. I needed to get out of this room before Philip said anything else that made my skin crawl.

I was almost at the door when he called out.

"Reina, wait up."