18. Elena
18
ELENA
T he morning sickness hits like clockwork at exactly 10:37 a.m., a cruel reminder that my body is no longer entirely my own. Twelve weeks pregnant and it hasn’t eased—if anything, it’s gotten worse.
I barely make it to the bathroom, marble cold against my knees as I heave up the ginger tea and bland toast that was all I could manage for breakfast. My hair—still damp from this morning’s shower—falls forward, but familiar hands gather it back before it can get in the way.
“Can I get you anything?”
Mario hovers behind me, his usual dangerous grace replaced by awkward concern. It’s almost endearing, seeing New York’s most feared exiled son looking so uncertain, like he’s facing an enemy he can’t shoot or threaten into submission.
His hands are gentle as they hold my hair, and I catch his reflection in the mirror—jaw tight with helpless frustration, those piercing eyes dark with worry.
“I’m fine,” I manage, wiping my mouth with trembling hands. The taste of bile burns my throat, making my eyes water. “The doctor said this was normal. It should go away in a few weeks.”
He doesn’t look convinced. One of his hands moves to my back, rubbing slow circles that ease some of the tension. It’s these moments that undo me—when the calculated killer transforms into something almost tender.
When I forget that this isn’t real, that I’m carrying another man’s child while playing a game that could get us both killed.
Before he can argue, my burner phone rings. The number belongs to Kate, my assistant of three years who handles the children’s hospital account.
Sweet, efficient Kate, who probably thinks I’ve lost my mind.
The charity gala was supposed to be my masterpiece—reimagining their annual fundraiser to double donations through meticulously planned silent auctions and strategic seating arrangements. Over three hundred sick kids depending on my ability to squeeze every possible dollar from Manhattan’s elite.
Even in exile, even in hiding, that responsibility weighs on me like a stone in my chest.
“Let it go to voicemail,” Mario says, his voice rough with concern, but I’m already answering. Three weeks before everything imploded, I’d promised the hospital director we’d break fundraising records this year.
Some promises should be kept, even when your whole world is burning down.
“Kate? What’s the emergency?” I ask urgently.
The silence on the other end makes my skin prickle. Then:
“How long?”
My heart stops. Bella’s voice is soft, controlled—more dangerous than if she were shouting. Ice spreads through my veins as Mario goes perfectly still behind me, no doubt reading the change in my expression.
His hand tightens on my shoulder, and I catch our reflection in the mirror—both of us frozen like prey in the moment before the predator strikes.
“Bella—” My fingers grip the phone so hard the plastic creaks. The taste of bile rises again, but this time it has nothing to do with morning sickness.
“How long have you been sleeping with the man who tried to kill me?”
Mario goes still behind me, his body vibrating as if he’s checking for violence. But there’s no enemy to fight here, no threat he can eliminate with practiced expertise.
This is emotional shrapnel, and all his protection is useless against it.
“It’s not what you think,” I whisper, though we both know that’s a lie. The words taste like ash in my mouth.
“Really?” Her laugh holds no warmth—it’s all ice and steel, the sound of the donna she was always meant to become. “Because what I think is that my best friend—the woman I trusted with everything—has been fucking the monster who held my stepdaughter at gunpoint. The man who tried to destroy my family. Who tried to kill me, remember?”
My burner phone chimes with an incoming message. Photos fill the screen, each one a knife to the heart: Mario and me at the clinic, his hand protective on my stomach as if he has any right to that tenderness. Our kiss in the parking garage, desperate and raw. Us on the boat, Mario’s jacket around my shoulders like some twisted fairytale.
Every betrayal captured in high-resolution clarity.
“Did you help him?” Her voice cracks, and the sound breaks something in my chest. “Have you been with him this whole time? When he tried to kill me? God, Elena—he threatened my babies. And you’ve been feeding him information this whole time?”
“No!” The denial bursts out, tasting like desperation. “Bella, I swear, I would never?—”
“Don’t.” The word slices through me like a blade made of ice. Gone is my sweet, artistic friend. In her place is Matteo DeLuca’s wife, the donna of New York’s most powerful family. Her voice holds all the authority of her position, all the cold fury of a woman betrayed. “Don’t you dare lie to me. Not after everything we’ve been through. Johnny, the nights you held me while I cried about losing my father and mother—was any of it real? Or was I just another mark in your game?”
Tears blur my vision, hot and unstoppable. This was inevitable, wasn’t it? You can’t live in two worlds without one of them burning. And now everything is going up in flames.
“Of course it was real. You’re my best friend—” My voice breaks on the words, memories flooding in: holding Bella through panic attacks, helping her plan her wedding, the way she squeezed my hand when she first showed me her twins on the ultrasound.
A thousand moments of genuine love and friendship, now tainted by betrayal.
“Friends don’t betray each other like this!” Her voice rises, raw with pregnancy hormones and hurt. “Friends don’t sleep with the man who—who?—”
She breaks off, and I hear the telltale gasping that signals a panic attack. Years of friendship means I know exactly what she’s experiencing—the tightness in her chest, the way the world starts to spin.
My hands itch to comfort her, the way I have countless times before. Muscle memory screaming at me to help, even as the impossible distance between us grows wider with every breath.
“The man who what?” Mario’s voice cuts through my guilt like a blade. He’s moved closer, pressed against my back now, close enough that Bella can probably hear him. “The man who saw through Giuseppe’s lies? Who tried to stop Matteo from becoming exactly what the old man wanted?”
“Mario, don’t—” I try to pull the phone away but he catches my wrist, his touch gentler than his voice.
“You want to talk about monsters, Bella?” he continues, and I feel the tension thrumming through him. “Ask your precious husband what really happened the night Sophia died. Why he’s so desperate to protect Bianca.”
“You fucking bastard,” Bella snarls, and I hear the raw fury beneath her tears. The sound of her transformation from my sweet artist friend into Matteo’s donna. “You think I don’t know what you are? What you’ve done? Elena might be fooled by your act, but I know better.”
“Bella, please,” I beg, tears falling freely now. “It’s not that simple?—”
But it is that simple, isn’t it? I’ve betrayed my best friend. Slept with the man who tried to destroy her family. Carried Anthony’s child while falling for her family’s greatest enemy.
There’s no coming back from this, no way to make her understand that both versions of me were real—the loyal friend and the woman who chose Mario anyway.
“It is that simple!” Bella’s voice breaks. “You chose him . After everything he’s done, everything he’s still doing, you chose him . And now you’re carrying Anthony’s baby—oh yes, Elena, I know all about that and so does Anthony—while sleeping with the man who?—”
She stops abruptly. The silence that follows is deafening, pregnant with realization. I stop breathing entirely, knowing what’s coming.
When Bella speaks again, her voice has gone cold. “That wasn’t really your cousin at the hospital, was it? The night we tried to take you home?”
I clutch at the toilet bowl, fingers white-knuckled against the porcelain, searching for anything to anchor me in this moment. Mario’s breathing stills.
“Bella, you have to understand. I couldn’t?—”
“Yes or no.” Each word falls like an executioner’s blade. “Was that your cousin?”
I close my eyes. “No.”
“You fucking bitch.” The words explode from her. “You let some stranger walk into that hospital—into my husband’s territory—and lie to our faces? Do you have any idea what could have happened? What if she’d been sent by our enemies? What if?—”
She cuts herself off again, and her voice is pure ice when she speaks again. “Matteo’s on his way to you right now.”
The world tilts sideways. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision as panic claws up my throat.
“What? How?—”
“The Cartier bracelet,” she says flatly. “The one Anthony gave you for your birthday. Did you really think those diamonds were just diamonds?”
My hand flies to my wrist where the bracelet gleams innocently in the morning light. I’d been wearing it for months, so used to its weight I barely noticed it anymore. Anthony’s voice echoes in my memory: “Every beautiful thing deserves protection, cara .”
Protection. Or surveillance.
Mario’s already moving, that lethal DeLuca grace returning as he shifts into tactical mode. His gun appears in his hand like magic, and he’s already speaking rapid-fire Italian into his phone. The transformation from the man who held my hair minutes ago to this deadly predator is jarring.
With trembling fingers, I unclasp the bracelet. The diamonds mock me as I hurl it across the room like it’s burned me. Such a beautiful cage I’ve been wearing all this time.
“Bella,” I try one last time, desperation making my voice crack, “I never meant?—”
“To what? To betray me? To help the man who tried to destroy everything I love?” Her words cut deeper than any knife. “Save your explanations, Elena. I trusted you with my life, my family, my children. And you—” Her voice breaks, and the sound shatters something inside me. “You were the one person I thought would never hurt me like this.”
A sob tears through her words, raw and broken. Then her voice hardens into something terrible. “I hope you and Mario get exactly what you deserve.”
The line goes dead.
My knees buckle as the magnitude of our exposure hits. The bracelet. Such a simple oversight. Such a deadly mistake.
And then another realization slams into me—Bella knows about my pregnancy. Which means Anthony knows. Because Bella confirmed it.
The room starts to spin as panic claws at my chest, stealing my breath. My heart hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
“Elena?” Mario’s voice sounds far away, underwater. Dark spots crowd my vision as I gasp for air that won’t come. The last thing I feel is him catching me, that familiar cologne mixing with the metallic taste of fear in my mouth.
I wake in a different room, monitors beeping steadily beside me. Not a hospital—too luxurious, too private. The walls are a soft cream, original art hanging between bulletproof windows. Another safe house, I realize. Probably one of Mario’s many contingency plans.
Mario sits beside me, his usual dangerous grace softened by what looks suspiciously like fear. His hand hasn’t left mine since I passed out, if the warmth of his grip is any indication.
“The baby?” I ask immediately, hand flying to my stomach.
“Is fine,” he assures me, but his voice holds an edge I’ve never heard before—something raw and protective that makes my stomach tighten with something other than morning sickness. “But you’re not leaving this bed until the doctor clears you. No more games, no more risks.”
“We have to move,” I argue weakly. “If Matteo?—”
His kiss silences me, gentler than our usual desperate encounters. “The only thing that matters right now is keeping you safe,” he growls against my lips. “Both of you.”
My hand finds his, pressing it against my stomach where his enemy’s child grows. The gesture feels impossibly intimate, impossibly right.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I’m not sure what exactly I’m apologizing for. The bracelet? Bella? Every choice that led us here?
“Don’t.” His voice is rough with emotion I’ve never heard from him before. “Don’t apologize for choosing me.”
But as sirens wail in the distance, growing closer with every heartbeat, I wonder if we’ll live long enough to regret our choices.
If this baby will ever have a chance to grow up in a world where her mother’s decisions haven’t damned her before she’s even born.