Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF DECEPTION
The world stopped spinning. The distant honking of harbor horns, the cry of seagulls over Lake Michigan, the idling hum of the armored SUVs—everything faded into dead silence.
My instinct was to scream a denial, to laugh in his face and call him insane. But looking into Alessandro’s piercing gaze, I knew that a lie would shatter whatever fragile mercy he had left for me.
"That's absurd," I stammered, taking a clumsy step backward. "I told you, I have the flu—"
Without warning, Alessandro stepped forward, reached down, and deftly snatched the strap of my vintage canvas bag from my shoulder.
"Hey! Give that back!" I lunged for it, panic turning into hysteria.
Alessandro held me off effortlessly with one arm while unzipping the bag with the other. He dumped the contents onto the hood of the black Escalade. Notebooks, nursing cue cards, cheap pens, lip balm... and the white plastic pregnancy test.
Matteo and the two bodyguards instantly looked away with strict, military discipline, pretending not to see.
Alessandro picked up the test. His knuckles turned bone-white as he stared at the two clear pink lines.
The silence stretched for an eternity. The ruthless mafia prince, a man whose word commanded armies of gunmen and bought politicians across the Midwest, looked completely frozen. His chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged intervals.
When he finally looked up, the fury in his eyes had been replaced by something far more dangerous: absolute, possessive obsession.
"Six weeks," he said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. "The timeline matches the night in Room 1520."
"Alessandro, please," I pleaded, tears finally spilling over my cheeks. "This doesn't change anything. I don't want your money. I don't want your world. Just let me leave Chicago. I'll get on a bus, change my name again, and you'll never see either of us again. I swear on my mother's grave!"
In a flash, Alessandro closed the distance between us. His hand snaked around my waist, pulling me flush against his hard chest so fast the breath left my lungs.
"Are you out of your mind?" he growled against my ear, his grip unbreakable. "You think you're going to carry a Vitali heir on the run? Living in roach-infested apartments, eating diner scraps, waiting for my enemies to find you and use my flesh and blood as leverage?"
"It’s MY baby!" I shouted, beating my fists against his broad chest. "You don't even know me! You think I'm a thief and a spy!"
"You carry my child, which makes you mine," he declared with chilled finality. "Your past as Elizabeth Vance is dead. Your life as Emma Thorne is over. From this second forward, you live under my roof, under my guard, and by my rules."
"And if I refuse?" I challenged, glaring through my tears.
Alessandro leaned in, his lips brushing the curve of my ear, sending conflicting waves of terror and heat down my spine.
"If you refuse, I arrest your little friend Liam for harboring a fugitive and accessory to corporate espionage. I have enough forged evidence in my desk to put him in Stateville Penitentiary for thirty years by sundown."
My heart shattered. "You're a monster."
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"I am a Vitali," he replied coldly, lifting me effortlessly by the waist and placing me back into the Escalade. "And you are about to learn what that means."
***
