Nothing else there 26

I changed dresses three times.

The first too tight across the middle, the second looks like I’m hiding something, which I am. The third is loose and dark and drapes over everything, and I stand in front of the mirror trying to see myself the way Dominic will see me tonight.

Nick is in the hallway with keys in hand, watching me adjust the neckline.

“You look beautiful, darling,” he says, and I meet his eyes in the reflection.

“I look pregnant,” I say, tugging the fabric lower.

“You look like a woman going to dinner.” He says it steady, but I can see him watching my hands shake while I fix the collar. “A woman who’s going to be fine.”

“At my dying father-in-law’s house, with my ex-husband, who doesn’t know I’m carrying his children and about to claim them to be his brother’s.”

He doesn’t correct me, just holds the door open, and I walk through it.

The drive takes forty minutes that I spent sitting pressing my thumbs together while Nick drives with one hand on the wheel and the other on my knee.

Eventually he glances at me, breaking the silence. “What can I do to soothe your nerves?”

“Remember, if anyone asks—”

“The twins are mine, we conceived when I got back from Sydney earlier to the city during our passionate reunion.” I look at him sideways when I hear the amusement in his tone. “Dominic wasn’t the only one who could cheat, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” Something between joy and worry crosses his face when he looks at me briefly before returning his eyes to the road. “The story is that we’re married and expecting. Nobody needs more than that.”

“Dominic will need more than that,” he says and I know he’s right.

Benjamin’s place is an estate on the Upper East Side — stone steps, black door, brass knocker. Inside, the dining room is long and dim with candles on the table and Benjamin at the head in his wheelchair.

He’s smaller than the last time I saw him, his suit hanging loose like the body inside it is retreating. Dominic is already seated with Camille beside him in something white and sleeveless.

She sees us and her mouth smiles while her eyes do something else entirely.

“Aria, you look perfect!” Her gaze travels down my dress, slow and deliberate. “Really well.”

I say nothing and sit across from Dominic while Nick pulls out my chair with his hand brushing my back brief and deliberate. I see Dominic’s eyes track the gesture with the precision of a man cataloguing evidence he doesn’t yet know what to do with.

The wine comes around and I cover my glass with my hand. When the server moves on, Dominic’s eyes stay on my hand, then move to my face, then slowly to the fabric over my midsection.

I can feel him looking the way you feel a change in temperature.

And I know the exact moment he sees it because his fork pauses for one second before it starts again.

Benjamin asks about the firm and Dominic talks for two full minutes about restructuring and regulatory outlook, his voice filling the room completely, leaving no space for anyone else. When he finishes Nick says “Sydney office is stable, nothing to report” and Benjamin’s eyebrow lifts and says “Nothing?” and Nick says “Stable is the report” — and the exchange tells you everything about both brothers in three sentences.

Camille starts talking about redoing the master bathroom — Italian marble, a designer she found — and nobody asks a follow-up question. Her voice fills the silence because silence makes her nervous.

I shift in my chair — the twins pressing low, the particular tilt that comes with carrying heavy — and Dominic sets down his fork.

“Aria.” His voice cuts through everything, quiet and precise. “When are you due?”

The room goes still and Camille’s hand freezes on her wine glass. Benjamin looked up from his plate at the sudden question about my yet unannounced pregnancy but his face lit up with hope.

I feel Nick’s leg press against mine under the table. Go on.

You want to play, Dom? Oh, I won’t back down, not anymore.

“March,” I say, keeping my voice even, holding Dominic’s eyes.

“March.” He repeats it, his gaze moving to Nick and back, I can see him running dates, timelines, the math. “And the father?”

Nick leans back with his arm on the back of my chair. “You’re looking at him.”

Dominic picks up his wine and takes a deliberate sip and sets it down. “The timing seems convenient, given that you were still my wife less than two months ago.”

“I came back to the city earlier than you think, brother dear,” Nick says, his voice easy. “You were busy, so we got time for our reunion.”

Dominic looks at his brother with a gaze that’s long and flat and still. “So you telling me that you were fucking my wife while she was still married to me?”

Nick opened his mouth to answer and I didn’t let him, leaning forward with my hands flat on the table. “Did you really think that while you were screwing every secretary in the building, I was sitting at home knitting?”

I keep my voice level — the voice I learned from him, steady and cold. The one tool he gave me that I can finally use against him.

“You stopped touching me long ago, Dominic. You don’t get to be surprised that someone else did.”

Camille’s jaw is tight and Benjamin seems not to mention anything except the baby topic. “What a wonderful news, Aria dear! Who are we expecting? Please, make an old dying man happy.”

“Twins,” Nick says easily and with a proud smile, placing his hand on my knees.

“Twins, huh.” Dominic turns the word over carefully, testing its weight. “Let me guess, boys?”

My hand finds my stomach under the table. “That’s what the doctor says. Twenty weeks, healthy and strong.”

His eyes move to Benjamin and back to me. I can see him assembling it — two grandsons, the company, the woman carrying them married to his brother.

The inheritance clause clicking into place behind his face like tumblers in a lock.

“I want a paternity test,” he says, and his voice has dropped into the register I know from boardrooms, the one that expects compliance. “They might actually be mine. I was drunk enough before that business trip to remember about you.”

“No,” I say, and I hold his eyes across the table. “You signed divorce papers. You told me to pack my bags. You brought a nineteen-year-old into my kitchen before I’d finished packing.” Each sentence lands and I can see him receiving them. “You don’t get to demand anything about my body or what’s inside it.”

“If those children are mine…”

“They’re not yours,” Nick says, quiet and deadly calm. “They’re ours. Mine and Aria. You have nothing to do about it.”

Dominic’s hand is flat on the table, fingers spread, and I know that hand.

I’ve watched it sign documents, close deals, press against his desk while he decided which part of my life to rearrange. I used to be afraid of that hand, and the realization that I’m not anymore moves through me like something unlocking.

Benjamin taps his glass with one finger and the room orients toward the sound instantly — the reflex of sons who were trained to listen before they were old enough to understand what they were listening for.

“Enough. Both of you.” He looks at Dominic, then Nick and me, his eyes resting on my stomach for a long moment. “Grandchildren… It’s been a long time since this family had something worth protecting.”

He picks up his fork and returns to his salmon, and the conversation is over because he decided it’s over. The same way every conversation in this family ends.

Nick’s hand finds mine under the table and I hold it. My other hand on my stomach where two boys are kicking gently against my palm.

Dominic watches me for the rest of the meal, his eyes moving between my stomach and my face and back again, and I let him look.

I eat my salmon and drink my water and sit with Nick’s hand in mine. I do not look away because I spent thirteen years looking away from this man. And I am finished with that.