I didn't fight. I didn't scream.
I walked through the towering iron gates of the Costa estate at exactly 11:55 AM. The guards at the entrance didn't bow their heads in respect like they used to. They smirked. One of them spat on the gravel near my bare feet.
I was wearing one of Harold’s oversized coats over my blood-stained hospital gown. I looked like a ghost. I felt like one, too.
The heavy mahogany doors of the mansion swung open before I even reached the steps.
Raphael stood in the foyer. He wasn't relieved to see me alive. He didn't look at my pale face or my trembling hands. His dark eyes were pure, unadulterated ice.
Before I could even open my mouth to ask about Harold’s family, Raphael closed the distance between us. His hand shot out, wrapping around my throat.
He didn't squeeze hard enough to kill me, but hard enough to steal my breath. He shoved me backward until my spine slammed against the marble wall.
"You stupid, selfish bitch," he hissed, his face inches from mine. "Did you really think you could embarrass me? Did you think you could run?"
"Harold's... family..." I choked out, clawing at his iron grip.
"They live. For now," Raphael sneered, dropping his hand. I collapsed to the cold floor, gasping for air, clutching my stomach. "But you? You are going to pay for what you did."
He grabbed me by the hair, dragging me up, and forced me into the grand living room.
Beatrice was lying on the velvet sofa. Her face was bandaged where the glass from the clinic had cut her. But it wasn't the cuts that made the room feel like a graveyard.
It was the silence.
Beatrice was sobbing hysterically, clutching her flat stomach.
"Look at her," Raphael barked, throwing me onto the rug at Beatrice's feet. My knees hit the floor hard. "Look at what your little escape stunt cost us."
I looked up, trembling.
"The shock," Beatrice wailed, her voice shrill and venomous. "The explosion at the clinic... the stress of you running away! I lost my baby, Elena! I lost Raphael's true heir because of you!"
The room stopped spinning. Everything went dead still.
She miscarried.
A tiny, pathetic part of my broken heart expected Raphael to realize the truth now. To realize that the only child he had left was the one growing inside me. To finally protect us.
Instead, Raphael knelt beside Beatrice, kissing her bandaged forehead. Then, he turned to me, his eyes burning with a hatred so deep it paralyzed me.
"You took my child," Raphael said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "So now, you owe us one."
My blood ran completely cold. "What?"
"You heard me," he said, standing up and looming over me like a god of death. "You are going to stay locked in the east wing. You will eat what we tell you to eat. You will take the vitamins we give you. And the moment that bastard child is born... it belongs to Beatrice."
"No," I gasped, scrambling backward on the rug. "No! He's mine! You can't do this!"
"I can do whatever the fuck I want," Raphael snapped. "Beatrice will raise the child as her own. And you? Once the baby is out, I don't care if your cancer rots you from the inside out. You will be dead to this Famiglia."
Beatrice sniffled, looking down at me with a twisted, victorious gleam in her tear-filled eyes. "Give me the necklace, Elena."
I froze.
"The Costa diamond," Beatrice demanded, sitting up slightly. "It belongs to the mother of the Don's heir. That's me now. Take it off."
I looked at Raphael, begging him with my eyes. Pleading for just one ounce of mercy. One shred of the man I thought I married.
He just held out his hand. "Give it to her. Now."
My hands shook violently as I reached behind my neck. I unclasped the heavy diamond heirloom—the necklace he had pinned on me under the moonlight, promising me forever.
I dropped it into his palm.
Raphael didn't even look at me. He turned and fastened it around Beatrice's neck. It sparkled against her skin, a glittering monument to my destroyed life.
"Guards," Raphael commanded without looking back. "Take the incubator to the east wing. Lock the doors. Board the windows."
Two massive men grabbed my arms, hauling me off the floor. I didn't fight them. My soul had already left my body. I was just an empty shell, a walking coffin for my own baby.
They dragged me down the long, dark hallway and threw me into a cold, barren room. The heavy door slammed shut. The deadbolt clicked.
I crawled to the corner of the room, curling my body around my stomach. I had traded my life for Harold's family, and now, my baby was going to be raised by the monsters who killed me.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the darkness to take me.
But then, a soft buzz vibrated against my thigh.
I froze. They had taken my coat, but they hadn't checked the hidden pocket of my hospital gown.
I pulled out the burner phone Harold had slipped me before I left his apartment.
The screen lit up the dark room. One new message.
Unknown Number: I didn't cut your restraints at the clinic just to watch you walk back into your own grave. Look out the window.
My breath hitched. The phone nearly slipped from my numb fingers.
My trembling legs barely supported me as I dragged myself off the cold floor. I stumbled toward the only window in the room, my hands gripping the thick iron bars Raphael had installed to keep me caged.
There, standing just beyond the estate's heavily guarded perimeter, at the edge of the dark tree line, was the silhouette of a tall man in a dark suit.
Lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating his face for a fraction of a second.
He was holding a phone to his ear, and his piercing, dangerous eyes were looking right up at my window.
The burner phone in my hand vibrated again.
Unknown Number: Are you ready to burn his world down, Elena? Or do you want to die in that room?
