Chapter 2
The date on the ultrasound matched.
Twenty-six weeks.
Exactly.
There was no question about timing.
Victoria and I had been separated then.
Not theatrically.
Completely.
Three months apart after an argument about family alliances and whether she actually wanted me or what marrying me meant.
During that separation, Elena entered my life.
Briefly.
Quietly.
She worked for a foundation that rented Caradonna venues for charity events.
We had dinner.
Then another.
No promises.
No games.
For six weeks, I felt like a man instead of a position.
Then she disappeared.
One message:
This life isn’t for me.
I believed it.
Why wouldn’t I?
Elena looked at me when I mentioned it.
“I never sent that.”
Of course.
Victoria had.
She learned about Elena before our reconciliation.
How?
Preston.
He had seen us together at one of my restaurants.
Told his sister.
Victoria said she felt humiliated.
Not because I cheated.
I hadn’t.
Because while she spent our separation believing I would eventually return, I had found peace elsewhere.
Then Elena became pregnant.
That turned humiliation into fear.
Victoria confronted her before Elena even contacted me.
“How did you know?”
Elena looked at her.
“She saw the clinic envelope in my purse.”
Victoria had gone looking for Elena after Preston identified her.
Not to threaten at first.
To understand.
She found prenatal paperwork.
Everything changed.
“What did you tell her?”
Elena answered for her.
“That if the baby was mine, Dante would assume I planned it.”
I closed my eyes.
That sounded plausible enough to frighten a twenty-six-year-old woman entering my world.
Victoria told Elena I would demand control.
That Caradonna would swallow her life.
That every choice about the child would become mine.
Some of those fears were not invented.
Power made them believable.
Then Victoria offered an alternative.
Leave Chicago.
Money.
Work.
Apartment.
No questions.
Elena refused.
And that was when Preston became involved.
I turned toward him.
“What did you do?”
He stared at the scorched ultrasound.
Then finally:
“I tried to scare her into changing her mind.”
May you like
Elena’s hand moved protectively over her stomach.
Her face told me the word scare was doing too much work.
