8. Mario
8
MARIO
T he surveillance photos spread across my desk mock me with fresh revelations. Elena leaving her ob-gyn appointment, clutching a manila envelope against her designer blazer.
The timestamp reads just two hours ago.
I flip through more recent shots—her ducking into a pharmacy, emerging with a paper bag. Stopping at a coffee shop but ordering tea instead of her usual triple espresso.
Each image adds another piece to a puzzle I should have seen coming.
“Latest report from Mount Sinai,” Dante announces, striding into my office. He drops a thick folder next to the photos. “Full records from her appointment today.”
I scan the medical documents, though I already know what they’ll confirm. HCG levels. Gestational age estimates. Prenatal vitamin prescriptions.
Elena Santiago is pregnant with Anthony Calabrese’s child.
“Have you verified this?” My voice sounds distant, controlled, though something primal and possessive claws at my chest.
Dante nods. “Three separate sources. The blood work doesn’t lie.”
The rational part of my brain—the part Giuseppe beat into both his sons—knows this was always a possibility. Elena’s role required getting close to Anthony, gathering intelligence by any means necessary.
Yet seeing the proof makes me want to burn Boston to the ground and salt the earth.
“Any movement from the Calabrese camp?” I maintain my mask of professional interest, though Dante knows me well enough to see through it.
“Nothing yet. She hasn’t told Anthony.” Dante hesitates. “But there’s more. Those Vietnamese shipping manifests we’ve been tracking? They’re moving again. Three containers arriving Thursday, marked as ‘specialty imports.’”
“Human cargo,” I translate flatly. The trafficking operation we’ve been investigating for months, hidden behind legitimate business fronts. “Location?”
“Port of Boston. O’Connor’s territory.”
Of course. The Irish getting their cut, providing cover through their legitimate shipping operations. A perfect setup—if you don’t look too closely at the paperwork.
Or at the young women who disappear between ports.
I study a photo of Elena entering Anthony’s building last week. She’s wearing Chanel, her golden hair caught in Manhattan’s wind.
Nothing in her perfect posture betrays the secret growing inside her.
“Sir?” Dante’s tone suggests he’s been trying to get my attention. “O’Connor’s waiting for confirmation about Thursday’s shipment. And his daughter’s been asking questions about our Boston holdings.”
Fucking Siobhan. Another player making moves we don’t fully understand yet.
But right now, I can’t focus on Irish politics or shipping routes or any of it. All I see is Elena carrying Anthony’s child while diving deeper into an investigation that could get her killed.
“Get me the jet,” I order, already reaching for my coat. “And find out everything about that doctor’s appointment. Every test, every detail.”
“And O’Connor?”
“Tell him I’ll get him the information he requests.” I holster my gun with practiced efficiency. “Have someone track Elena’s movements. I want to know everywhere she goes, everyone she talks to.”
“She won’t like being watched that closely,” Dante warns.
“I don’t give a fuck what she likes.” The words come out harsher than intended. “She’s carrying a ticking time bomb. Everything changes.”
I catch Dante’s knowing look but ignore it. Let him think what he wants. Elena’s pregnancy changes all the calculations, reshuffles every card on the table.
A Calabrese heir growing in her womb—it’s either the perfect cover or a death sentence.
Knowing Elena, she’ll try to play it as both.
But pregnancy makes women vulnerable. Soft. And Elena Santiago has too many enemies to afford being either.
My phone buzzes with a message from her: We need to talk.
I study the three words, imagining her composing them in that precise way she has. Always so controlled, my little planner. Always three steps ahead.
But this time, she’s miscalculated. A baby isn’t just leverage or an opportunity. It’s a weakness enemies will exploit. A vulnerability that can’t be hidden behind designer clothes and perfect manners.
I think of Matteo’s wife, how her pregnancy made her a target.
History has a way of repeating in our world.
Stay where you are , I text back. I’m coming to you.
Her response is immediate: Don’t do anything reckless.
I almost smile. As if she doesn’t know that everything about us—about this—has been reckless from the start.
I tuck the surveillance photos into my jacket pocket, but one catches my eye. Elena leaving the doctor’s office, her hand resting protectively over her stomach. It’s such a small gesture, unconscious probably, but it changes everything.
The need to protect her—to destroy anyone who might harm her or the child she carries—rises like a tide. Dark and unstoppable.
Anthony Calabrese might have put his child in her womb, but Elena Santiago belongs to me. Has since that first night outside her office, when she looked at me without fear and saw exactly what I was offering.
Time to remind her of that fact.
“Have the jet ready in twenty,” I tell Dante. “And get me everything we have on Anthony’s schedule for the next week.”
“Planning something special?”
I check my gun one last time, Giuseppe’s lessons about preparation running through my mind. “Just a conversation between future family members.”
The rush of possessive violence that accompanies those words would make my father proud.
Some lessons, it seems, stick deeper than others.
My private jet touches down at Teterboro as twilight bleeds into darkness. The New York skyline glitters against the night sky like broken glass—beautiful but deadly. Just like her.
The drive to Elena’s apartment passes in a blur of city lights and mounting tension. Each minute brings me closer to a confrontation I’ve been rehearsing since those surveillance photos hit my desk this morning.
I find her in her apartment, padding around her kitchen in cream silk Hermès pajamas. The fabric flows like water with each movement, making her look softer, more vulnerable than the power suits and designer dresses she usually wears.
Something primitive rises in my chest—possession, protection, rage I can’t quite name. The sight of her makes my blood burn with emotions I refuse to examine too closely.
“Were you going to tell me?” The words come out in that deadly quiet tone Giuseppe taught both his sons to use—the calm before violence. “Or just let me find out through surveillance photos?”
Elena doesn’t flinch—she never has, not even that first night outside her office when I emerged from the shadows like the predator I am.
Instead, she meets my gaze steadily. Her hair falls in loose waves around her shoulders, free from its usual perfect styling, and the city lights streaming through her floor-to-ceiling windows cast shadows across her face, making her look even more beautiful.
“It’s an opportunity,” she says smoothly, moving to pour herself water instead of her usual wine. The simple gesture confirms everything. “Access we couldn’t get any other way. Anthony thinks?—”
“Anthony thinks he’s claiming something that’s mine.”
The words escape before I can stop them, raw with an emotion I refuse to name. Something dark and possessive that’s been growing since that first meeting.
Her eyes widen slightly—the first crack I’ve seen in her perfect composure. “How many times do I have to tell you that you’re playing with fire, Elena. He’s more dangerous than you realize.”
The Manhattan lights paint patterns across her silk pajamas as she moves, the fabric clinging and flowing in a way that makes my hands itch to touch.
To claim. To possess.
“I learned to play with fire from the best.” She moves closer, that magnetic pull between us impossible to resist. Her perfume wraps around me—something expensive and subtle that makes my blood heat. “Isn’t this exactly what we wanted? A way inside their operation?”
I catch her wrist before she can retreat, feeling her pulse race beneath my fingers like a trapped bird. Her skin is soft, but her bones are delicate—too delicate for what she’s doing.
“Not like this,” I growl, pulling her closer until we share breath, until I can see the flecks of gold in her eyes. “Never like this.”
She’s close enough to kiss now, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her body through the thin silk of her pajamas. The fabric rustles softly with each breath, reminding me how easily it would tear under my hands.
The thought makes my grip tighten involuntarily.
The city continues its chaotic symphony below us—car horns and sirens and the endless pulse of eight million lives. But up here, in her perfect apartment with its perfect view, time seems suspended between one heartbeat and the next.
Between one lie and another. Between what we are and what we pretend to be.
And through it all, Elena watches me with those clever eyes that see too much. That have always seen too much. Meanwhile, Anthony’s child grows like a time bomb set to destroy everything we’ve built.