Chapter 23
Lorenzo
I’ve become someone I don’t recognize.
By day, I’m the cold, polished Don everyone expects me to be.
The man who says the right things to his fiancée, who sits in immaculate suits at doctor appointments while her mother beams like royalty as we hear our baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
I nod at color schemes for my tux for the wedding.
I pretend to care about China patterns for a reception I don’t want.
I even flew to Florida for a day to play golf with Fran’s father, smiling like I wasn’t dying inside with every swing.
I’ve perfected the role and perfected the lie.
But at night?
At night I am obsessed with Elizabeth.
We devour each other like the clock is bleeding out—like the thirty days we were given are slipping through our fingers faster than either of us can hold them.
When I’m not inside of her, I’m thinking about her.
Wanting her. Planning all the ways I’ll pull her into my arms the second I walk through the door.
I text her when I shouldn’t.
Late.
Early.
Between meetings.
One message, and she’s waiting for me when I get home all eager, breathless, warm in all the ways that undo me.
And God help me, every morning I watch her take the placebo pills she thinks are protecting her. I stand there, leaning against the bathroom doorframe like it’s nothing, while she swallows a lie I built with my own hands.
I tell myself I should stop. That a better man would switch the pills back. That fate doesn’t need any more tempting than I’ve already done.
But I don’t stop.
I can’t.
Because every time she lifts that pill to her lips—every time she trusts me with something so small, so intimate—a part of me whispers that this is how I keep her.
That if the world forces us apart, if alliances and expectations crush what we’ve built, then at least I’ll have this one truth anchoring us together.
A truth growing in the shadows. A truth only I know.
So, yeah, I watch her take the pill that does nothing before I bend her over the counter and fuck her again.
I’m not proud of it. But obsession rarely makes room for pride. And when it comes to Elizabeth I crossed the line a long time ago.
I am keeping my word to her. I have men in Kansas City digging through every alley, every backroom, every set of books to figure out who gave the orders to attack their holiday party. I move pieces, call in favors, put pressure on the right throats. I do everything I promised.
But I do more than that.
I feed my obsession.
I learn every fucking detail I can about Elizabeth. Not because I should or because it’s right.
Because I can’t stop.
I know her mother died when she was six, the same age Sienna was when she lost her mother.
A cruel, echoing symmetry I wish I could ignore.
I know her father couldn’t survive the grief and drank himself to death by the time she turned twelve.
But she’s better off without him because he was nothing more than a thug.
I know she lived with a great aunt after that, a woman who wasn’t ready to raise a child but did it anyway because no one else would.
I know Elizabeth grew up learning how to hold herself together because no one else ever did it for her.
I know she got into college on a full scholarship she earned herself.
Her major is still undecided, something she feels guilty about even though she shouldn’t.
She never had the luxury of choosing dreams; she’s always chosen survival.
I know she’s only dated a handful of men.
And God help me I hate every single one of them.
Not because they hurt her. But because they ever touched something I want for myself.
They got pieces of her I never should have cared about.
Because they stood where I stand now. Because they were allowed to call her theirs in ways I never should’ve wanted.
I read their names. I memorize their faces.
I catalog their flaws until the jealousy burns clean through me.
She would hate me for this. If she knew the extent of what I’ve learned, what I’ve done, what coils in my chest every time I hear her name—she’d run.
And still, I can’t stop.
Because every detail I uncover pulls me deeper into a place I swore I’d never go again.
A place where I’m not the Don, not the fiancé, not the strategist. I’m just a man who wants the girl he was never supposed to touch.
And wanting her is starting to feel less like obsession and more like inevitability.
My phone buzzes, slicing through the quiet of my office.
Cesaro’s name flashes on the screen.
I force my breathing to steady before I answer.
“Hello.”
“Just calling with an update,” he says. “We met with a store owner near the girls’ old apartment. He has footage of men hanging around his parking lot before the shooting.”
A cold pulse runs through me. Progress—finally.
I hum, low. “What about the tip?”
I set up an anonymous line two nights ago. It’s a number whispered through the underworld, promising cash to anyone with information. Most calls were trash. Noise. But one had sounded promising and too detailed to ignore.
Cesaro exhales. “I’m meeting with the man tomorrow.”
“Check it out first,” I instruct. “Verify he’s not bait. Then talk to the store owner.”
“Will do.” Silence stretches for a beat. Then he asks, “How’s Fran holding up?”
I lean back in my chair, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Fran?”
“You mentioned the other day she was stressing over the menu for the reception,” he says, casual but curious.
“Ah. That.” My tone flattens. “We got it squared away. Chicken pesto for the Italians and some tofu dish for her friends.”
Cesaro lets out a low laugh. “That sounds right.”
I try to match his humor, but it rings hollow.
Chicken pesto.
Tofu.
I’m agreeing to entrees and florals and venues while my chest feels carved out while the only woman I think about is wrapped in a quilt that isn’t hers, curled on a sofa she doesn’t belong to, trying to pretend I never touched her until the moment I get home to her.
Cesaro doesn’t say it, but I hear it in the pause that follows. He knows something is off. Maybe he feels the shift in me. So I force myself to play the part. The dutiful fiancé. The focused Don.
Even as I speak, every part of me is somewhere else.
With Elizabeth.
I say, “Fran’s wanting to get some kind of fancy bloodwork done on the baby so we know the gender.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Cesaro asks.
“I said the same thing.” My jaw tightens. “Her doctor agreed.”
He’s silent for a moment before saying, “That’s good.”
“Is there anything else?” I ask, reaching for the jacket draped over the chair. “I’m about to head home for the night.”
A loaded pause crackles through the line.
“How is Ms. Miller handling things?”
Annoyance flares immediately through me, sharp and defensive. Miss Miller. The name alone pisses me off because she should be Mrs. Conti.
“As well as can be expected,” I say, voice clipped.
“She’s young,” he answers, too lightly. “She’ll move on soon enough.”
His words grate at my fucking soul.
Young.
Move on.
Like she didn’t carve herself into my ribs every time she breathed my name.
I grip the phone hard enough that the plastic creaks.
“I did get an interesting call,” Cesaro continues, oblivious or deliberately pushing. “From Dr. Lars.”
My stomach goes cold.
“Oh?” The word feels like a lie sliding off my tongue.
“He mentioned that he would send another round of placebos to the penthouse.”
My pulse hammers until my ears ring.
“To replace for Ms. Miller.”
A razor’s edge cuts through my chest.
“He must be mistaken,” I say smoothly, too smoothly.
“Funny,” Cesaro snaps back, “because he sounded pretty damn sure.”
Silence drops between us, thick and poisonous.
His tone is tight as he says, “Please tell me you haven’t jeopardized everything with Fran by trying to get that girl pregnant.”
But I don’t buy it for a moment. He’s trying to piss me off. And to call her that girl. The cable in my neck pulls tight. Heat flares through me. Pure, territorial rage.
He has no right to ask. No right to speak Elizabeth’s name in the same breath as “jeopardize.”
I force myself to breathe once so I don’t say something that will give me away.
When I speak, my voice is low and lethal.
“Watch your tone, Cesaro.”
Because if he presses me or questions me again I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold the line between Don and man.
“You know I’m right,” he says quietly. “What good would it do for her to get pregnant now? Fran is having your child. Fran and that baby are your future.”
I close my eyes.
Because I fucking hate that there is a part of me, small and rational and buried under all the obsession, that knows he’s right.
But it doesn’t matter and it sure as fuck doesn’t touch the storm inside me. Because the rest of me wants Elizabeth carrying my child more than I’ve wanted anything in years.
If she were pregnant, she’d be tethered to me.
Claimed.
Untouchable.
Mine in a way no one could rewrite or erase.
She would belong to me in the oldest, most undeniable way.
And no one could take her from me.
“Call me when you have news,” I say, my voice clipped, stripped down to command.
I end the call before he can respond.
Before he can say anything else that makes too much sense.
I grab my jacket from the chair, the fabric whispering against my fingers like the prelude to a decision I’ve already made.
It’s time to go home to my girl. To the only person who feels like something real in a world built on alliances, expectations, and lies.
And God help anyone who tries to take her from me.