Chapter 7 - CAPTIVE IN THE CAGE
The East Wing suite was larger than the entire ground floor of Liam’s apartment building. It featured a king-sized canopy bed draped in Egyptian silk, a roaring marble fireplace, and panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the crashing waves of Lake Michigan.
Yet, every gilded molding felt like the bars of a cage.
Dr. Keller, an elderly, discreet physician who had served the Vitali family for decades, had just finished the preliminary ultrasound. The quiet, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the fetal heartbeat had filled the quiet room earlier, bringing unexpected tears to my eyes—and a strange, reverent silence to Alessandro, who had stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed, watching the small monitor like a man transfixed.
After the doctor left with instructions for prenatal vitamins and strict rest, the heavy oak door opened, and Alessandro stepped back inside, carrying a crystal glass of bourbon.
"The baby is healthy," he said quietly, walking over to the window.
"Are you going to keep me locked in here forever?" I asked, sitting on the edge of the vast bed, hugging my knees. "Your uncle wants me dead. Your fiancée looks like she wants to poison my tea. This place is a slaughterhouse waiting to happen."
Alessandro turned, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. "Marco won't touch you. He knows the penalty."
"You're naive if you believe that," I challenged, meeting his gaze. "Three years ago, my father discovered a paper trail. Millions of dollars diverted from your family's legitimate real estate fronts into offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands. He thought it was your father. But right before he died, he realized the signatures were forged. It was Marco."
Alessandro’s jaw tightened. "My father and Marco built this empire together. Marco is greedy, but he is loyal to the bloodline."
"Then why did your father die so suddenly of heart failure at fifty-two?" I pushed, standing up and taking a brave step toward him. "Why did Marco immediately try to push you out of the leadership council? My father wrote down everything in a microdot film hidden inside my mother's silver locket. The locket Liam kept in our safety deposit box!"
Alessandro set his glass down on the mahogany table with a sharp clink. He closed the distance between us in two long strides, grabbing my wrists and pulling me gently yet firmly against him.
"Why didn't you tell me this at the hotel?" he whispered, his eyes searching mine with a mixture of agony and suspicion.
"Because I thought you were the one who ordered the hit on my parents!" I cried, my voice breaking. "I thought you were a cold-blooded killer!"
"I am a killer, Elizabeth," he murmured, his face inches from mine, his voice dripping with dark velvet intensity. "I have killed men who threatened my family, men who broke our laws, men who betrayed our trust. But I do not murder accountants and their wives in fabricated car crashes. I have honor."
His hand moved from my wrist up to my cheek, his rough thumb wiping away a stray tear. The intimacy was dizzying.
"If Marco killed your father," Alessandro swore, his voice vibrating with absolute lethality, "and if he had any hand in my father’s death... I will burn him alive with my own hands. But you stay here, where I can see you, where I can keep you and our child breathing."
May you like
Before I could reply, the emergency sirens inside the mansion began to wail with deafening intensity. Red strobe lights flashed through the hallways, and the sound of distant gunfire erupted from the lower courtyard.
***
