If Loving You is Wrong

46: Finally Free

She hadn't meant to tell him like this but she hadn't even noticed what she was saying.

It was out now, for better or worse and it wasn't like she could change it.

"Twins?" he said breathlessly, and Liana had to smile, she had been just as shocked when the doctors told her.

"I know it's a lot, imagine how I felt!" she tried for humour, terrified of how he would feel about this new bump in their road to happiness.

"What are your family saying about this?"

Liana took a deep breath,

"Nothing good," she said quietly. "My brother is MIA since his wedding that never was, Luisa is riding firmly on her high horse, my mother is...well, she'd my mother and she loves me no matter what. My father..."

Antonio looked up at her before turning to the guard,

"May I?" the guard inclined his head stiffly and Antonio reached out to take hold of her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. Liana smiled,

"My father hates me, and you of course. He doesn't speak to me, he's stopped speaking to my mother for speaking to me. Antonio, I have never seen my parents fight...this has broken them."

Liana couldn't hold these tears back as she thought about the fights her parents kept having now that she was pregnant and defending who her father thought was a murderer and who defiled his daughter.

"I don't think my father will ever speak to me again."

"Your father loves you Liana, he cant cut you out of his life. He's just hurt."

"For this long! Its been months and he wont even look at me!" Antonio didn't know what else to say. Liana's relationship with her father was broken and that was his fault.

How could he fix this?

"It will get better...it will. You're having his first grandchildren...he cant ignore you forever."

As funny as it might seem, the thought had never occurred to her. She was pregnant with her father's first grandchildren; and he had to love them even he didn't speak to her. There was a silver lining.

A rare smile since all this had happened came on her face and Liana nodded;

"Thank you," Antonio smiled at her reassuringly and cautiously she said,

"What's important now is getting you out of here...for our children."

He looked distraught,

"I don't know if I will Liana," the words seemed to be torn from him as he looked defeated. "I didn't kill Olivia and yet I'm still here, months later. I thought it would have been proven and ended straight away but for some reason... I'm still here."

Liana sighed, seeing how hurt he was by everything that was going on. He was locked up obviously, but he was hurt that people had to doubt whether or he would kill his wife based off one testimony.

"My mother says it's to make an example of you. It's a media storm out there and with the added scandal of our relationship; they want you to have done this." Antonio nodded, seemingly understanding,

"Antonio please...let me testify. Let me explain that this wasn't some sordid affair."

Antonio looked up at her with tears rimming his eyes and with a simple nod, he agreed.

---

"Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?"

"I do,"

"Please be seated."

Liana took her seat in a court a few days later and proceeded to give her statement about Antonio. The lawyer had said it was purely to create a persona of Antonio that the jury had not previously met. To them, he was a cheating and abusive husband to a disabled and now deceased wife.

So, Liana went on the stand and explained how she met Antonio, how he had stayed away from her at first and how he had tried to stay away from her even after they'd slept together. She said how she had blackmailed him into staying with her even when he tried to break it off and of course how her pregnancy had been a shock to them both.

"Antonio was a loving and devoted husband to Olivia even while with me. He told me repeatedly how much he loved her and that it hurt him to betray her."

"Then why did he?" the prosecutor asked. "If he loved her so much, why did he betray her, continuously might I add; with you?"

Just as Liana was about to answer, some movement in the back of the room caught her eye and she was surprised to see her father walk into the court room.

They caught each other's eyes and while his face didn't let on what he was thinking or feelings, the fact that he was here spoke volumes. Her mother hadn't travelled to the states with her but her father...her father was here...

"Miss Vargas?"

Liana turned back to the gentleman and sighed firmly,

"Despite Antonio's love for her and commitment to their vows of never leaving her; Olivia was cruel and made him unhappy. Antonio continued to betray her as you say, because he was lonely and found a happiness with me that Olivia no longer gave him."

"Is that what he told you?" the prosecutor said sarcastically;

"No, that's what I know. It's what I knew when Olivia called asking to buy my baby for five million dollars."

Liana let that little nugget sit as the court room bustled,

"Order! Order!"

The prosecutor was flustered,

"You claim Olivia Sabbatini offered you five million dollars to buy your baby?"

"I'm not claiming anything, that's what happened. When I refused she threatened to tell my father who at the time didn't know about Antonio and me or my pregnancy."

"When I hung up on her, she called my father and told him," Liana looked at her father's stony face. "She told him that I was lying to him and nothing has been the same between us since. I regret that more than anything."

"Miss Vargas, there's no way you can prove Mrs Sabatini offered you this money."

"No, there isn't...but it doesn't make it any less true. Or the fact that Olivia and Antonio were going through the process of surrogacy that wasn't going very well and because of that, she got seemingly got desperate. I had a baby and she needed one." Liana shrugged as though it were obvious and when the prosecutor said no further questions, there was something about it that felt victorious.

---

The jury deliberated for two hours before returning to court and when they read out the Not Guilty verdict, Antonio was looking into Liana's eyes; the eyes of the woman he loved and who had ultimately saved his life.