Chapter 6 - Blood Never Lies
The penthouse was a cathedral of minimalist luxury—vast expanses of dark Italian marble, floor-to-ceiling glass offering a sweeping panorama of Lake Michigan churned into whitecaps by the gale, and walls lined with rare modern art. Yet it was cold. It lacked a soul. It felt like a magnificent cage designed for a solitary king.
I set Leo down on the massive ivory sofa while Clara explored the kitchen to find milk for him.
"Hungry, Mama," Leo murmured, rubbing his tired eyes. The long flight and the terrifying rush through the terminal had finally caught up to his little body.
"Clara is getting you some milk, sweet boy," I said, kneeling before him and unbuttoning his little wool coat. "Then we’re going to take a nap."
"Big castle," he repeated, yawning and leaning his head against my shoulder.
The heavy double doors of the private elevator chimed.
My spine locked.
The doors slid open, and Dante Moretti strode into the foyer. He had discarded his long coat. His charcoal suit jacket was unbuttoned, his silk tie loosened, and his knuckles were bruised and red—evidence that whatever had happened at O'Hare after I fled hadn't ended peacefully.
His eyes locked onto me the moment he cleared the hallway.
"You ran," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that sent vibrations through the floorboards. "You took an unregistered path into the terminal and nearly walked straight into Volkov's snatch team. Do you have any idea what they would have done to you?"
"I told you I don't want your protection!" I stood up, deliberately putting my body between Dante and the sofa where Leo was curled up with his toy train.
"You don't get a choice," Dante snarled, closing the distance between us with predatory strides. "I didn't spend three years living in hell just to watch you get butchered because of your stubborn, reckless pride. You are staying right here until I root out every single rat in Victoria's network and—"
Dante stopped dead.
His words died in his throat.
From behind my legs, a small, sleepy voice piped up.
"Mama? Who that man?"
The air was sucked out of the room. The only sound was the distant howl of the wind battering the glass forty-four stories above the pavement.
Dante looked down.
Leo clutched my trouser leg, peering around my hip with wide, inquisitive eyes. His dark, unruly hair fell over a forehead shaped exactly like Dante’s. His jawline was sharp, already displaying the fierce masculine symmetry of the Moretti bloodline. But it was his eyes that sealed the truth—obsidian pools flecked with sharp, striking silver, an unmistakable genetic anomaly that only the direct heirs of the Moretti dynasty carried.
Dante's face lost all color. The terrifying mafia don, the man who had ordered the executions of dozens of cartel bosses without blinking, took half a step backward as if struck by a physical round.
His gaze flicked between Leo and me, his breathing turning shallow and erratic.
"Elena..." His voice was barely a whisper, hoarse and trembling with an emotion I had never heard from him in eight years of loving him. "What is this?"
"This is my son," I said, lifting my chin, refusing to let him see the terror trembling in my knees.
"How old is he?" Dante demanded, his voice cracking, stepping forward again, his eyes devouring every inch of the boy’s face. "Elena. *How old is he?*"
"He is two and a half," I lied, the words tasting like ash.
"Don't lie to me!" Dante roared, the sheer force of his voice making Clara gasp from the kitchen doorway. "Look at him! He has my eyes! He has my father's brow! You were pregnant when you left Chicago!"
"And what if I was?" I screamed back, tears of fury finally breaking through my defenses. "What was I supposed to do, Dante? Come back to the church? Walk down the aisle while you were slipping a ring on my sister's finger and whisper, *'Surprise, Dante, don't marry her, you knocked me up'*?"
Dante stared at me, his chest heaving violently, his hands trembling at his sides.
"You carried my son across an ocean," he whispered, the realization ripping through him like a blade. "You had my child alone in a foreign country, and you never told me."
"You made your choice," I hissed, stepping closer to him, my chest brushing his, uncaring of the danger. "You chose a war. You chose Victoria. You chose to be a Don instead of a father."
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"I chose to keep you alive!" he bellowed, grabbing my arms, his grip bruising as his face twisted in profound agony. "If I had known you were carrying my blood, I would have burned this entire city to ash before I let you walk away!"
***
