Chapter Eleven
Serena
Lorenzo.
He is here. In this room. Flesh and blood. And he is staring at my stomach like the sight of me is a knife being twisted into his ribs.
Tears spill down my face before I can stop them.
Hot. Violent. Humiliating. I have tried for months to pretend this belly did not exist, to pretend it was not real, to pretend that the child growing inside me was not tied to a man who murdered my father without blinking.
The man I once loved. The man who broke me long before anyone else ever touched me.
I remember the sickness when they first dragged me here.
The vomiting. The dizziness. The way my body rebelled every morning.
They thought I had a stomach virus. I thought that too.
Until Luciano ordered tests and the doctor came back smirking, refusing to tell me anything.
I thought I was dying. A disease. A tumor. Something cruel and poetic.
It would have been kinder.
But then the weeks passed. And the nausea grew worse. And the exhaustion drowned me. And my belly began to swell in tiny, undeniable ways. I stopped asking questions. I stopped caring what they did to me. Whether I lived or died felt irrelevant.
And then the old man told me.
I had been two months pregnant when they captured me.
My world disintegrated in one breath. The walls, the floor, my memories, everything collapsed around me. I was kidnapped. Trafficked. Useless. Helpless. And pregnant. Pregnant with a man’s child who had shattered my life in ways no one else could.
And what hurt the most was not the fear. It was the betrayal of my own heart. Because before everything went to hell, I wanted him. I wanted him to choose me. I wanted him to fight for us. And instead he destroyed everything he touched, including me.
I have small flashes of what happened here. Glimpses. Cold gel on my stomach. A monitor beeping. Hands holding me down. A screen with shadows that looked like bones. Three examinations. Three months.
I am five months pregnant.
I have been trying not to feel it. Trying not to acknowledge the way my body changed, how heavy I feel, how weak, how tired, how emotional. It is all too much. My chest burns as I cry harder. I want peace. I want silence. I want to disappear.
Then I see him.
His face.
His eyes.
His presence swallowing the room.
And for one terrifying second, I want nothing more than to collapse into him and beg him to take me away. I want his arms. His warmth. His voice telling me I am safe. But this was the same fantasy I had before he killed my father. Before he proved that loving him was a death sentence.
I cannot be fooled again.
“Love.” His voice breaks across the room like a storm, and my knees almost buckle. He takes a step toward me.
I stumble backward.
“Please take me back to my room.” My voice cracks as I look at the old man. His expression freezes, shocked that I am asking to return to my cage rather than face the man I loved.
“Serena.” Lorenzo’s tone is low and steady, but I hear something underneath. Fear. Panic. Something that tastes like desperation.
“Do not come any closer.” My voice shakes. My chest trembles. I can barely stand. I am scared. I am angry. I am exhausted. I am pregnant and alone and drowning in emotions I cannot sort.
I try to move. My shoulder brushes a wall. Except it is not a wall. It is his chest. Solid. Warm. Unmoving.
I push him with both hands, but he does not budge. He never moves unless he wants to.
“Eyes on me.” His fingers close around my chin, forcing my eyes to his.
His touch is gentle, painfully gentle, like he is touching something broken.
My tears burn down my cheeks as I look into his eyes.
Those deep, beautiful, infuriating eyes.
My breath hitches when my gaze slips to his mouth.
God, how many nights have I dreamed of his lips?
How many times have I wished for his touch?
Even now, even after everything, my body betrays me.
The hormones are not helping. I want him to kiss me until the world disappears.
“Of course it is because of you.” My voice cuts through the silence, bitter and trembling. Because even though he did not kidnap me, I know this is revenge meant for him. And I am the collateral damage in his war.
I tear my chin from his hold. My heart shatters as his skin leaves mine.
“Serena.” He reaches for my hand.
“Do not touch me.” The whisper comes out harsher than I intended. And the truth is cruel. Because I want him to touch me. I want him to pull me in and hold me so tightly that I forget the last months ever happened. I want comfort. I want safety.
But I cannot trust him.
Lorenzo finally tears his gaze away from me and fixes it on the old man. The moment he does, something shifts in the room. The old man’s smug confidence evaporates. He pales, actually pales, when he sees what Lorenzo’s face looks like now, murder carved into every line of it.
“What stops me from killing you right now, Luciano?” Lorenzo’s voice is low, cold, deadly. The kind of voice that feels like a knife pressed to your throat.
The old man doesn’t flinch this time, though. He simply lifts his chin.
“It would be. . . unwise,” he answers smoothly. “I doubt your baby would appreciate the sound of your gun turning my skull into dust.”
My stomach twists. My hands shake.
But I force my voice steady.
“It’s not yours,” I lie.
Lorenzo goes still. Truly still. His fury shifts, sharpens, twists into something raw.
“Excuse me?”
The pain in his voice nearly knocks the air from my lungs. But I can’t let myself break. If he believes the baby is his, he will never leave me in peace. He will cage me, own me, smother me until I can’t breathe.
I have to protect myself. I have to protect my child.
“I said the baby isn’t yours,” I repeat, louder this time. Stronger. Like if I say it with enough conviction, it might become true.
“Serena,” he exhales, almost a growl. “From what I see, you’re about five months pregnant.”
I feel my pulse hammer wildly. God, he always pays attention to everything.
“We were together five months ago.”
My chest tightens. I scramble for something else, something sharper, something that will cut him deeply enough to make him step away.
“You weren’t the only person I was intimate with.”
The lie tastes like acid.
But I force it out.
“Remember when we broke up? When you thought I cheated?” Another lie. One that nearly destroyed me when he believed it.
His eyes darken, a storm building behind them. For a second, I wonder if I went too far.
“Cut the crap, Serena,” he snaps. “I know it’s not true.”
“Then why did we break up?” I shoot back, and for the first time, I hear the real question beneath my words. “If it wasn’t true, why?”
His jaw clenches. His gaze flicks between my face and my belly.
“Now isn’t the time.”
I wrap my arms around myself and lift my chin.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I tell him. “I would rather rot in this place than be anywhere near you.”
His eyes flash with something I don’t recognize, something wounded, something exhausted.
“I can’t do this right now, love.”
Love.
The word slams into me so hard my breath catches.
He crosses the space between us before I can react. And then his arms wrap around me, hard, desperate, trembling despite his strength. His scent hits me first. Then his warmth. Then the way his body shakes with the force of whatever he’s feeling.
My hands betray me.
They lift.
They go around his neck.
They hold.
God, it feels like home.
Like the one place I was safe before everything shattered.
I try to push him away, but he only holds me tighter, gentle around my stomach, careful in a way that breaks me entirely. He buries his face in my neck and inhales me like oxygen.
“Fuck,” he growls against my skin, voice cracking. “I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
My eyes burn. My throat closes.
I want to collapse in him, curl into him, beg him not to let go.
But that’s the same weakness that ruined everything before.
“Lorenzo,” I whisper, barely holding myself together. “I said don’t touch me.”
He slowly loosens his arms, but his hands lift to my cheeks, cradling my face with a gentleness that destroys me. His thumbs brush my skin. His breath trembles.
“I looked after you,” he says, voice raw. “Every day. Every single fucking day, Serena. I looked for you until I lost my mind.”
My vision blurs again.
No.
No.
I can’t let myself believe him.
“Not knowing where you were,” he breathes, “not feeling you, not having you next to me. . . I lost everything.”
His hand leaves my cheek. It settles gently, so gently, on my belly.
And it feels like my heart stops.
No one has touched my stomach except me. No one has acknowledged this baby. No one has shown tenderness toward it. Toward me.
Until now.
“Let me take care of you,” he whispers, palm spreading protectively over my bump. “Let me take care of our baby.”
The words feel like a slap. I wrench myself backward, stumbling.
“I told you it’s not yours,” I snap. “Don’t touch me.”
His jaw tightens. “Feeding me lies won’t keep me away from you, love.”
His voice is a warning. A promise. A truth I can’t stop shaking from.
And then he turns toward the old man, rage consuming him again.
“You kidnapped her,” Lorenzo spits, the words scraped raw from his throat. “You knew she was pregnant, and you still locked her in a fucking basement.” His hand drifts to his gun, unhurried, deliberate. There’s no rush in him. No chaos. Just execution. “Any last words?”
Luciano looks at Lorenzo with real fear trembling behind his eyes. “You’ll risk a war between Cosa Nostra and Bratva.”
War.
Mafia war.
My skin crawls.
My throat closes.
My hands instinctively slide protectively over my belly, as if I can shield my baby from even the sound of it. What the hell is Lorenzo doing? Why is he provoking a mafia war when I’m standing right here, when his child is growing inside me? My heart squeezes painfully.