Chapter 26 #2
His jaw locks.
I can see him trying to recalibrate. Trying to fit this new truth into the version of events he has been carrying around like a blade. But the old wound is still there, and men like Lorenzo don’t let go of a grievance just because a bigger one has appeared.
I take a breath and force myself to say the next part.
“And what about Francesca?”
His gaze snaps to mine.
I press on anyway, because someone has to say the ugly part out loud. “How do you think your wife is going to feel when she finds out you’ve got your pregnant mistress hidden blocks away from her?”
His face darkens. “Elizabeth.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s a real question. What exactly is your plan here? Keep me in this penthouse forever? Play house with me while Francesca waits politely on the side with your other child and pretends her husband hasn’t humiliated her?”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate that it does.
Hate that part of this hurts because I can imagine it too clearly—Francesca hearing the whispers, piecing it together, realizing she was traded for me without ever being asked what she wanted.
Lorenzo goes still.
“She is not your concern.”
“Maybe she should be,” I fire back. “Because apparently I’m the only one in this room thinking past the next five minutes.”
His mouth tightens into a hard line. “You think sending you back to Russo solves this?”
“One hundred percent.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I snap, stepping closer. “Because whatever this is between us, it is not sustainable. Not with your wife. Not with your enemies. Not with the fact that you have spent weeks treating me like something you can lock away until I behave.”
We stand there in the bright kitchen glaring at each other like we could kill with it.
I swallow the lump in my throat and soften my voice by force. “Lorenzo, please. Let me go back to Dante.”
The words seem to hit him harder than all the shouting. His face changes but not with pain. With rage.
“No.”
I shut my eyes for one second. “I’m not asking.”
“Clearly.”
“This is the best option for all of us.”
His laugh is sharp enough to cut. “All of us?”
“Yes.”
“You mean for you.”
“For the baby too.”
That wipes the mockery from his face.
He takes one slow step toward me. “Do not use my child to argue for another man.”
A chill runs through me, but I hold my ground.
“I’m using reality,” I say. “Dante knows the truth. He agreed to help me. He gave me a way out when I didn’t have one.”
“And now you don’t need that way out.”
I stare at him. “Can you stand here and tell me you really believe that?”
He doesn’t answer.
My laugh comes out hollow. “You find out the baby is yours and suddenly everything’s fixed? That all the damage just disappears because now you’ve got some biological claim?”
His expression hardens further. “That is not what I said.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s what you mean.”
“It means,” he says, voice dropping, “that you are not leaving this house with my child to go play wife to another man.”
“There would be no playing involved,” I shoot back. “Dante and I made an arrangement. He respected me enough to give me a choice.”
That does it. Lorenzo’s temper breaks clean across his face.
“Respect?” he bites out. “You want to stand there and talk to me about Russo respecting you?”
“Yes.”
“He used your fear.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He put himself in my place before I even knew there was a child.”
“Because you got Francesca pregnant and then tampered with my birth control!” I shout. “I had no choice in this!”
The truth cracks through the room.
His voice is quieter when he speaks again. Too quiet. “You really think so little of me.”
I almost laugh.
“Lorenzo,” I whisper, “look around. This is a prison and you have the ability to free me.”
His face turns to stone. I can see the instant he shuts the softer part of himself away. The part that said he didn’t deserve my forgiveness. The part that looked shattered two minutes ago. Gone. In its place is Don Conti.
Cold.
Controlled.
Merciless.
“Get one thing straight,” he says. “Dante Russo is not coming here to get you. If he does, he’s a dead man.”
I shake my head. “You don’t get to decide my fate.”
His eyes flash. “I already have.”
A wave of helpless fury rises so fast it makes me dizzy. “You cannot just keep making decisions for everyone and call it love.”
The last word hangs there.
His mouth hardens. “Do not talk to me about love when you’re asking me to hand my family to another man.”
I blink. “Family?”
“Yes.”
The word lands like a blow. For one irrational second, my stupid heart aches at hearing it. Then I remember Francesca and her unborn child. I remember that he married her when he thought I left him. And whatever softness might have sparked in me dies just as quickly.
I lift my chin. “Then maybe you should have thought about your family before you married someone else.”
That one hits exactly where I meant it to. His nostrils flare. He looks like he wants to say something vicious enough to make me bleed. Instead, he steps back.
“Fine,” he says. The word is glacial. “We are done discussing this.”
“No, we are not.”
“Yes,” he says, turning toward the door, “we are.”
“Lorenzo—”
He stops with his hand on the counter, shoulders rigid beneath his coat. When he speaks, his voice is deadly calm.
“If you say Russo’s name to me one more time right now, I will break something expensive just to avoid saying what I actually want to.”
I stare at his back. Part of me wants to push him anyway. Most of me is too tired so I say nothing.
He grabs his keys, strides out of the kitchen, and leaves me there alone with the wreckage. A second later, I hear the elevator ding..
And only then do I let myself sink against the counter, shaking so hard I have to grip the marble to stay upright.
Because I got the truth out.
And somehow, everything is worse.