Chapter 28
Birdie
There are a million questions swirling through my mind as the elevator doors close.
But then a horrible memory slashes through me.
The sleek metal doors seal shut with a soft, final whisper, and suddenly it feels like the room tilts sharply to one side. My breath comes fast and thin. The bright penthouse blurs around the edges.
My hand flies to my stomach as the memory opens like a wound.
Not this penthouse.
Another room. Another day. Francesca in front of me, smoothing her skirt with elegant fingers, her voice turned almost gentle.
“As I said, I’m here with a peace offering.”
My pulse had thundered then, just as it does now.
“One where you get more than you deserve,” she’d said coolly, “though, I admit, I’ll be getting something out of it too.”
I remember swallowing hard, my throat dry with fear and hope and the strange, fragile disbelief that maybe—finally—someone was offering me a way out.
“What is it?” I had asked.
Her smile had barely moved.
“I’ll help you leave.”
The words had hit like a punch.
Even now, in the present, I feel them all over again. That terrible jolt of hope. That desperate, reckless part of me clawing to life because freedom had been standing right there.
“You pick the city,” Francesca had said smoothly. “I’ll make sure you get there without Lorenzo knowing. You’ll be able to live your life.”
Then she’d leaned in, lowering her voice.
“And we can finally move on with our life and our family.”
My stomach twists hard.
Even then I had known it wasn’t kindness.
She hadn’t been offering freedom because she cared about me.
She’d been offering exile so she could secure her place by Lorenzo’s side and erase me from the board.
But buried beneath that poison had been something worse.
A chance at a life that didn’t belong to him.
The memory rushes faster now, the edges sharp as glass.
“I’d say I’d give you time to think it over, but we don’t have time,” Francesca had said crisply, rising from the bed like a woman who had already won. “If you want to go, we need to be at the airport in an hour.”
My heart had pounded so hard it hurt.
“How do you know he won’t find me?”
She had smiled then.
“Because the moment you leave this penthouse, Elizabeth Miller goes away. I’ll even let you pick your new name,” she had added, mockingly kind. “Once you’re ready, meet me in my room. One hour. Or it’ll be too late.”
Then she’d gone, leaving her perfume behind like a curse.
Back then, I had stood there shaking, wondering what the right choice was.
Wondering if leaving without a goodbye would destroy Lorenzo.
Wondering if maybe that was exactly what he deserved for tampering with my birth control.
Wondering whether protecting the baby meant running before his world swallowed us both whole.
I can still see myself moving in a trance. Grabbing only what I needed. A few clothes. My passport. My phone. Photos of me and Sienna. The scraps of a life that had never really felt like mine.
When I stepped into the hallway, my legs had barely felt real. Lorenzo’s bedroom door had been open. Voices inside. Francesca and Cesaro, speaking in low tones I couldn’t quite hear. And there had been that moment. That one tiny moment outside the doorway when I could still have turned back.
Could still have gone to my room and chosen Lorenzo and the life he was offering. But then I had thought of Sienna. And I stepped inside.
“I’m ready,” I had said, though my voice was paper-thin.
Francesca had smiled like a queen receiving tribute. “Perfect. Do you know where you want to go?”
“I think… Los Angeles.”
“A city you can lose yourself in.” She had nodded approvingly. “Perfect.”
Something had twisted in my chest then. Intuition. Dread. Love. All of it tangled together so tightly I could barely breathe.
“Wait. I—”
“Now,” Francesca had snapped.
The memory hits me so hard my knees nearly give out in the present. Cesaro moves before the word fully leaves her lips. Big hands. Strong. A vise around my arms.
“Wait,” I’d cried, but it had come out thin and useless.
Then the sting in the side of my neck.
My hand flies there now, in the present, clutching skin that suddenly remembers.
The world had tilted then. Blurred. Darkened around the edges like burnt paper curling inward. My legs had buckled, but Cesaro hadn’t let me fall.
Francesca had stepped closer, serene as a saint, one hand resting delicately on her bump.
“Don’t worry, Birdie,” she had said sweetly. “I’ll make sure Lorenzo never finds you.”
My vision had swum. My thoughts had scattered. My body had gone heavy and traitorous in Cesaro’s arms.
“Wait,” I’d slurred, reaching for something—anything—some final anchor to the life being ripped away from me.
But it had already been too late. The floor and ceiling had flipped. My eyes had closed. My whole world had narrowed to one collapsing pinpoint. And through all of it, one thought had survived.
Please forgive me, Lorenzo.
Because even then, sinking into drugged darkness, I had known what he would do when he found me gone. He would burn the world to find me.
The memory breaks.
I gasp and stumble back against the wall beside the elevator, the bright Chicago penthouse snapping back into focus in brutal pieces—glass, sunlight, pale floors, the faint scent of Francesca’s perfume still lingering in the air.
Oh my God. It was her!
She was the one who drugged me and had me thrown away in Italy. My breath keeps coming too fast. My chest aches. My skin feels clammy and wrong.
One of the female guards looks up from her post near the entryway. “Miss Miller?”
I can’t answer.
Because Francesca had stood right here, in this bright, beautiful cage Lorenzo built for me and looked me in the face and warned me about danger.
And maybe she meant it. That’s the sickest part.
Maybe she had come to save me from her father this time.
Maybe she had meant every word. But she was also the one who handed me over before.
My mind won’t settle around either version of her. The frightened wife. The smiling traitor. The pregnant woman trying to save her baby. The woman who once helped take me from everything I knew. All of them are true.
I press harder into the wall, hand still clamped over my stomach.
The guard is closer now. “Miss Miller, are you all right?”
No. I am not all right. Because if Francesca was part of what happened to me before, then Lorenzo was right to distrust more than I wanted to admit. And if she has turned on her father now, then she is more desperate than she let me see.
Because if Cesaro helped her once—
I go cold all over.
Cesaro.
Lorenzo still trusts him.
“Get me a phone,” I say.
The guard pauses. “Miss Miller, Mr. Conti’s instructions were—”
“I don’t care.” My voice comes out sharper than intended, frayed at the edges. “Get me a phone. Now.”
She hesitates just long enough to tell me she is debating whether to refuse. Then she nods and crosses toward the console.
I push away from the wall and force my legs to move. One step. Then another. Slow. Careful. Breathing through the tail end of the panic.
My mind is still replaying Francesca’s voice.
I’ll help you leave.
Elizabeth Miller goes away.
I’ll make sure Lorenzo never finds you.
The sweetness of it turns my stomach.
The guard returns with a phone.
I take it with fingers that barely feel steady enough to hold glass.
“Do you need a doctor?” she asks.
“No.”
What I need is Lorenzo. The realization lands hard enough to make me close my eyes for one second. I need the man I was just begging to let me go.
Because if Francesca told the truth today, then her father is coming. And if Francesca lied today, then he may already be here.
I stare at Lorenzo’s number. Then at Cesaro’s.
My thumb hovers.
If I call the wrong one, I could be handing myself over all over again.
The baby shifts, and I want to cry out in fear. It’s a tug low in my belly. A reminder. A warning. A reason to get this right.
I lift my head slowly and look out over the city, all that bright distance glittering beyond the glass. This place is still a cage. But now I understand something I didn’t before. Sometimes the cage is the only thing standing between you and the wolves.
My thumb presses Lorenzo’s name.
The call rings.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
“Pick up,” I whisper, clutching the phone so hard my fingers ache. “Come on, Lorenzo.”
It keeps ringing.
Then his voicemail answers, and the sound of his voice almost undoes me all by itself.
I don’t think. I just speak.
“Lorenzo, it’s me.” My breath shakes. “You need to call me back right now. Francesca was here, and I remembered something. I remembered what happened.” I close my eyes, forcing the words out before I can lose my nerve.
“It was Cesaro. He was the one who grabbed me. He injected something into my neck. Francesca was there.” My voice cracks. “Please call me back.”
I end the message and stare at the screen like I can force it to light up again. Nothing happens, though. No instant call back. No miracle.
No Lorenzo.
My heart is pounding so hard it makes me feel sick. There has to be someone who can help me. Then I see Dante’s name and freeze. For one second, all I can do is stare at it. Then I hit call.
He answers before the first ring finishes.
“Conti, awfully ballsy of you to call—”
The sound of his voice is like grabbing a handrail in the middle of a fall.
“Dante.”
Something in the way I say his name must tell him everything, because his tone changes instantly.
“Birdie! What happened?”
I sink down onto the edge of the sofa because my legs suddenly don’t feel steady enough to hold me.
“Lorenzo’s wife came here. She said her father threatened her baby if she didn’t scare me off.” I swallow. “She warned me, Dante. She told me to be careful. And when she left…” My hand flies back to my neck. “I remembered.”
His breathing goes quiet on the line.
“Remembered what?”
“The day I disappeared.” The words come faster now, tripping over each other.
“She came to me and offered to help me leave. She said she’d get me out without Lorenzo knowing.
She told me to pack. I did. I went to her room and Cesaro was there, and when I said I was ready—” My voice breaks.
I force it steady. “He grabbed me. He injected me. Francesca was there. She knew. She was part of it.”
Dante swears, low and vicious.
I grip the phone tighter. “It was Cesaro. He’s how I ended up in your aunt’s basement!”
He doesn’t answer immediately which terrifies me.
“Dante?”
“I heard you.”
The words come out like ground glass.
I wet my lips. “Did you know?”
“No.” A beat. “Not for certain.”
That stops me cold.
My pulse stutters. “What does that mean?”
“It means I knew something about that night smelled wrong.” His voice is clipped now, furious in a way I’ve only heard once or twice before. “But I never had proof. But if he used Conti’s name, then it makes sense.”
“He still trusts him,” I whisper.
“Then Conti is a bigger fool than I thought.”
Some instinct in me flares hot and protective. “Don’t.”
“You still defend him.”
“I’m not defending him.” I press a hand to my stomach. “I’m just… trying to think.”
The room feels too open and every shadow now looks like somewhere a man could hide.
“Listen to me,” Dante says. “Are you alone?”
I glance toward the guard by the entry, who is pretending not to watch me while absolutely watching me. “No. There are guards here.”
“Conti’s?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust them?”
The question lodges under my ribs.
“I don’t know.”
“Then assume you shouldn’t.”
Cold slides through me.
I lower my voice. “What do I do?”
“First, you stay where you are.”
I almost laugh at the irony. “That won’t be hard.”
“I’m serious, Birdie.”
“I know.”
His exhale is rough. “Second, you do not tell anyone but Conti what you just told me. Not the guards. Not the staff. No one.”
“I already left Lorenzo a voicemail.”
“Good.”
Good. That word shouldn’t comfort me, but it does.
“Third,” Dante says, “if Cesaro was part of getting you out the first time, then he may already know you remember. If he knows, he’ll move fast.”
My entire body goes still. I hadn’t let myself think that far.
“He can’t get in here,” I say, but the words sound weak even to me.
Dante doesn’t answer that which is answer enough.
My hand presses harder to my stomach. “Dante.”
“I’m here.”
The steadiness of his voice is almost enough to keep me from breaking apart.
“What if Lorenzo doesn’t believe me?”
Dante is quiet for a beat too long.
Then he says, “He will.”
The certainty in his voice makes my throat tighten.
“How do you know?”
“Because men like him can forgive the woman they love for lying long before they forgive a man they trusted for betraying them.”
The words hit in a place I don’t want to examine too closely. I look toward the windows, the blazing city beyond them, and all I can think is that everything is narrowing again. Funneling toward something I can’t yet see.
“I don’t know what Francesca wants,” I whisper. “I don’t know if she came to help me or to warn me or to use me again.”
“You don’t need to know that right now.”
“I feel like I do.”
“No.” His voice hardens. “Right now, you need to stay alive.”
I nod before I remember he can’t see me. “Okay.”
“Good.”
I close my eyes for a second, then open them. “If Lorenzo calls you—”
“I won’t lie.”
That surprises me enough to make me still.
Dante continues, “I’m not interested in playing games with this. If Cesaro did what you say, then I want him dead almost as much as Conti will.”
A shiver runs through me.
“Birdie,” he says more softly, “stay on the phone with me until he calls back.”
I glance at the screen. No missed call or text.
I exhale. “I will. Be safe.”
I end the call and then I pray. Because that’s all I can do for now.