Chapter 2 - THE DATE NICO COULD NOT IGNORE
Anna’s words were barely audible.
But Nico heard them.
Not here.
They were not the words of a woman frightened by a simple fainting spell. They were a warning.
His arm tightened around her instinctively.
“Someone call a doctor.”
“I don’t need one.”
Anna tried to pull away, but the effort made her wince.
Nico saw it.
So did Serena.
The atelier owner hurried across the room, pale with alarm.
“There’s a private lounge upstairs. We can—”
“No.”
Nico’s voice cut through the room.
Everyone stopped.
He had spent most of his life learning exactly how much authority could be carried in one syllable. Men twice his size had lowered guns when he used that tone.
Anna only looked irritated.
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I said you’re sitting down.”
“Nico.”
He froze.
It had been eight months since she had said his name that way.
Not Mr. Moretti.
Not some polite stranger’s version of him.
Nico.
Serena slowly lowered her arms beside the unfinished wedding gown.
Something cold entered her expression.
“You should listen to him,” she told Anna. “You nearly collapsed.”
Anna’s gaze shifted toward Serena.
For half a second, Nico saw guilt.
That frightened him more than the fainting had.
Anna allowed herself to be guided toward a velvet chair near the wall. The atelier owner brought water. Another employee returned with a cool towel.
Nico crouched in front of Anna.
“When did you eat?”
“This morning.”
“It’s nearly four.”
“I’ve been busy.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’re eight months pregnant and working on your feet without eating?”
Anna’s eyes flashed.
“You lost the right to interrogate me a long time ago.”
Silence.
The employee holding the water stared at the floor.
The atelier owner abruptly became fascinated by a rack of veils.
Serena did not move.
Nico felt the accusation like a blade slipping neatly between his ribs.
“I’m not interrogating you.”
“It sounds familiar.”
“Anna.”
“Please don’t.”
Her composure cracked for the first time.
Only slightly.
But Nico saw the trembling in her fingers as she reached for the glass.
Then something slid from the pocket of her cardigan.
A white appointment card.
It landed faceup between Nico’s polished shoes.
Anna stopped breathing.
Nico looked down.
St. Catherine’s Women’s Center.
Appointment: October 14.
Patient: Anna Bennett.
Estimated delivery date: November 3.
Nico stared at the date.
November 3.
His mind began doing the calculation before he could stop it.
He and Anna had ended things in February.
February 2, to be exact.
He remembered because he remembered every second of that night.
The rain against the windows.
Anna’s suitcase by the door.
The photograph he had thrown onto the kitchen island.
Anna staring at it as if someone had punched her.
His own voice saying, “Tell me it isn’t true.”
Her answer.
“If you already believe it, nothing I say will matter.”
He had let her walk out.
Three weeks later, his mother had introduced him formally to Serena Bellini, daughter of one of the most influential families in New York’s old criminal world.
By May, he and Serena were publicly engaged.
November 3.
Nico’s pulse slowed in the dangerous way it always did before violence.
He picked up the appointment card.
Anna reached for it.
“Give me that.”
He did not.
“Nico.”
“How many weeks?”
Serena spoke from behind him.
“What is going on?”
Anna closed her eyes.
“Thirty-two.”
Nico’s head turned toward her.
Thirty-two weeks.
The numbers aligned with brutal precision.
His mouth went dry.
“When did you find out?”
Anna stood too quickly.
“Enough.”
“When?”
“This isn’t your concern.”
He rose.
The room seemed smaller now.
Every instinct he possessed—the instincts that had kept him alive through betrayals, federal investigations, assassination attempts, and wars between families—was screaming that there was something directly in front of him he had failed to see.
“Who is the father?”
Anna’s face hardened.
Serena inhaled sharply.
“You cannot seriously think you have the right to ask me that.”
“I asked a question.”
“And I’m not one of your soldiers.”
“No. You’re not.”
His voice dropped.
“You’re the woman who disappeared from my life and is standing in front of me eight months pregnant with a due date that makes absolutely no sense unless—”
“Unless what?”
Anna’s voice broke.
She hated herself for it immediately.
Nico took one step closer.
“Unless that baby is mine.”
Serena whispered, “Nico.”
Anna looked toward her.
The bride-to-be was still standing beside the gown Anna had spent six weeks constructing.
For the first time since Nico entered the atelier, Anna’s professional mask disappeared entirely.
What replaced it was not anger.
It was exhaustion.
“I’m going home.”
She reached for her coat.
Nico blocked her path.
“Answer me.”
“Move.”
“Anna.”
“Move.”
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
He had seen Anna angry.
He had seen her laughing, sleepy, furious, playful, stubborn.
He had almost never seen her cry.
That frightened him.
“Why does it matter now?” she asked.
The question was quiet.
“Why does what matter?”
“Whether he’s yours.”
Nico’s entire body went still.
Serena grabbed the edge of the fitting platform.
Anna realized what she had said.
Too late.
Nico stared at her belly.
Then at her face.
“He?”
Anna’s lips parted.
“You said he.”
She said nothing.
Nico stepped closer.
“Is my son inside you?”
Anna’s chin trembled.
Serena’s voice came sharper now.
“Anna, answer him.”
Anna looked at Serena with genuine regret.
Then back at Nico.
“Yes.”
The word was so small that for one strange second it seemed incapable of carrying the destruction it caused.
Nico did not move.
Somewhere outside, a horn sounded on Madison Avenue.
Someone laughed on the sidewalk.
An elevator bell chimed.
Inside the atelier, the entire world had changed.
Nico had faced guns without flinching.
He had once watched a man bleed out against his shoes and finished the meeting before calling an ambulance.
But now his hands were shaking.
“My son.”
Anna wrapped both arms protectively around her stomach.
“Don’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Tell you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Anytime in the last eight months.”
“When you stopped answering my calls?”
Nico frowned.
“I never received calls from you.”
Anna stared at him.
“I called seventeen times.”
Something shifted inside him.
“I sent messages.”
“I got none.”
“I came to your house.”
“You never came to my house.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Her voice rose.
“The guard at your gate told me you had given instructions that I was never to be allowed onto Moretti property again.”
Nico turned slowly toward the window.
That order had never existed.
Anna continued.
“I was six weeks pregnant. I stood outside your gate in February while it snowed. Your security chief came down personally and told me you knew about the pregnancy and wanted nothing to do with it.”
Nico’s head snapped back.
“What security chief?”
Anna’s face tightened.
“Marco.”
A silence unlike the others fell.
Nico felt something cold crawl down his spine.
Marco Santoro had been his father’s closest lieutenant.
His godfather.
The man who had raised him after Nico’s parents died.
The man who had recommended the alliance with Serena’s family.
The man currently controlling half of Moretti security.
Nico’s voice came out almost soundless.
“Marco told you I knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?”
“I had just watched you accuse me of sleeping with another man.”
The photograph.
Nico remembered it clearly.
Anna leaving a hotel with Daniel Vale, an accountant employed by a rival organization.
Nico had been told they were having an affair.
Two weeks later, Daniel disappeared.
His body was never found.
“I thought you betrayed me.”
“And I thought you wanted me and our baby gone.”
Serena suddenly stepped off the platform.
“Wait.”
They both turned.
She looked pale.
Not jealous.
Terrified.
“What photograph?”
Nico stared at her.
“That has nothing to do with you.”
“I think it does.”
Serena’s hand slowly moved to her mouth.
“Nico… describe the photograph.”
He did.
The hotel entrance.
Anna beside Daniel.
The date printed in the lower corner.
February 1.
Serena’s eyes closed.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
She opened them again.
“My father had that photograph.”
Nico’s expression changed.
“What did you say?”
“I saw it in his study.”
Anna went still.
Serena looked between them.
“Two weeks before you proposed to me.”
Nico felt the room tilt.
Serena took another step backward.
“I didn’t know who Anna was then. I only remember the picture because my father was arguing with Marco. They stopped talking when I walked in.”
Nico’s jaw clenched.
“What were they saying?”
Serena swallowed.
“I only heard one sentence.”
“What sentence?”
She looked directly at Anna’s pregnant belly.
“My father said, ‘Once the girl is gone, Moretti will have no reason left to refuse the marriage.’”
Nobody spoke.
Then Anna’s phone buzzed on the sewing table.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Anna looked at the screen.
The remaining color vanished from her face.
Nico saw the message before she could hide it.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
YOU WERE WARNED TO STAY AWAY FROM HIM.
A second message appeared.
NOW YOU’VE PUT THE BABY IN DANGER.
And attached beneath it was a photograph taken less than five minutes earlier.
Anna sitting in the chair.
May you like
Nico kneeling in front of her.
Someone had photographed them from inside the atelier.
