In the Seas You’ve Forgotten

A month before my wedding with Vincent Moretti, he decided he wanted to have a child with another woman. I refused, but he brought it up incessantly every day. Two weeks before the wedding, I received an ultrasound image in the mail. That was when I found out—his first love, Serafina, was already a month pregnant. It turned out, he had never considered asking for my permission. In that moment, years of love shattered like thin ice on a river under the weight of a single step. I canceled the wedding, destroyed everything that tied us together, and on the day we were supposed to be married, I walked into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s laboratory. From that day on, Vincent Moretti ceased to exist in my life.