Chapter 16 Beatrice #2
He exhales, defeated in posture but not in spirit. “Forgive me, cara. I will make it up to you. I swear it.”
He turns and walks out, the door clicking shut behind him.
The moment the latch falls into place, the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding tears out of me all at once. My hands shoot out to brace myself against the counter, palms flattening against the cold marble as if I need the stone to keep me standing.
My chest rises and falls too fast, air clawing in and out as panic surges, but then… something inside me snaps. Not loudly. Not violently. Just a quiet, decisive crack—like a thin branch breaking under the weight of too many storms.
I straighten. My body moves before my mind catches up.
I walk to the door and slide the deadbolt into place with a sharp, satisfying click.
I check it again.
Only when I’m certain he cannot walk back in do I finally step away.
I stand there in the dark, breathing like I’ve outrun a hurricane, one hand pressed over my throbbing wrist. It pulses with every beat of my heart, swollen and angry with the shape of his fingers. The ache crawls up my arm and settles in my chest.
I turn toward the bathroom, my heels clicking against the marble floors, the sound echoing through the penthouse like a metronome counting down to something I’m not ready to face. The moment I flick on the light, the reflection hits me like a slap.
I grip the counter, leaning in, forcing myself to look.
Red-rimmed eyes.
Pale skin.
Dark circles I spent too long covering this morning. A woman stretched thin, trying to hold together a life that keeps cracking beneath her feet.
“Oh, Beatrice…” I whisper, the words trembling out of me before I can stop them.
Because for the first time, I truly see myself. And I barely recognize the woman staring back.
My heart cracks open when I meet the eyes staring back at me in the mirror.
They look hollow, bruised with exhaustion, stripped of the girl I used to be.
There was a time I carried light in them—hope, softness, something warm enough to believe in.
But the woman standing here now looks like someone who’s been surviving on fumes and borrowed courage.
Slowly, almost afraid to confirm what I already know, I lower my gaze to my wrist.
The breath rips out of me.
Under the harsh fluorescent light, the damage reveals itself in all its ugly truth. A perfect imprint of his fingers blooms across my skin, deep red bleeding into violet, the shape of his hand branded over the bone.
It’s never been this bad. Never this blatant. Never this undeniable.
My wrist throbs beneath my touch, a pulsing reminder of what happens when he thinks I’m slipping from his grasp. And if this is what he does when he believes I’m staying, I can’t even imagine what he’ll do when he realizes I’m planning to leave him.
I’ve spent the last two weeks building an escape—quiet, careful, hopeful. I let myself believe I might actually make it out alive. But looking at this bruise, this mark of ownership, doubt settles into my bones like cold water.
Call him.
“No.” The word slips out sharp and small. “I can’t go to him.”
My reflection doesn’t argue. But the voice inside me does.
Calling Matteo would ignite a war I cannot survive.
Not me, not my parents, not anyone caught between these two men.
And after what we did in that utility closet—after the way he touched me, the way I let him claim parts of me I shouldn’t have offered—it would only complicate everything I’m trying to untangle.
Matteo and Giacomo aren’t two jealous men circling the same woman. They’re two wolves with blood in their teeth and history between them that could raze a city. A war between them wouldn’t be chaos. It would be annihilation. And I am the most fragile piece on the board.
I can’t risk it. Not now. Not while my family is still within reach of his shadow.
My gaze drifts back to the bruise on my wrist, darkening by the second.
The bruise is new in its severity—but the feeling isn’t. The sensation of being gripped too tightly, silenced too quickly, claimed in ways I never agreed to… I’ve felt versions of this for months. I just refused to name it.
Now I can’t avoid it anymore.
My palm flattens against the counter. I steady myself, drawing air into lungs that feel both too full and unbearably hollow. Matteo’s voice threads through my mind, soft and relentless.
You deserve more.
For so long, I believed “more” was a fantasy reserved for women braver than me.
But something shifts now. Something sharp. Something necessary.
It settles into my bones like steel.
I need to break free.
I know what I need to do.
The realization settles slowly, like a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake, heavy and irrevocable.
It may be reckless, maybe even na?ve, but I have to prepare every fail-safe I can.
If I can’t go to Matteo, then I have only one option left.
I’ll turn to the law, to whatever sliver of protection the system can offer me, even if it feels like bringing a candle to a battlefield.
I’ve never gone up against darkness like this. Not the kind that smiles. Not the kind that whispers devotion while tightening its grip.
Men like Giacomo grow out of streets that turn you into monsters, and to beat a monster, you almost have to become one.
Who do I have to become to defeat him? How much of myself will I lose in the process?
And when freedom finally comes—if it ever does—what pieces of me will be left to salvage?
The next morning, I dress in silence. No makeup. No perfume. Nothing that feels like a mask. I slip into clothes that are comfortable, practical. I don’t know how long today will be. I only know I won’t get through it if I’m pretending.
My phone pings nonstop with messages from Giacomo, each one threaded with apology and expectation. I tell him I need time. He assumes I’m upset, that I need space to breathe.
He doesn’t realize I need him far enough away for everything to unravel where he can’t see it.
Seventy-two hours. That’s the deadline I’ve given myself.
Three days to plan my escape or buy myself a head start. It isn’t enough… but it’s all I’ve got.
I slip out of the penthouse before dawn. The hallway is dim and quiet, but something in me hesitates outside Matteo’s door. The urge to knock flares—
But I force myself to step back.
Stay away from him. No matter how loudly your heart pleads otherwise.
The taxi ride to the hospital is suffocating. My blood feels thick, my thoughts sluggish, fear dragging at every part of me.
Every scenario in my head ends badly. Every one of them involves my parents. And I still don’t know how to protect any of us.
By the time I reach the sterile lobby, the lights feel harsh enough to strip me bare. I wait in the emergency room, nerves wound so tight I can barely breathe. Minutes stretch into hours. My stomach knots tighter each time the door opens.
When they finally call my name and I’m led into a private room, I sit on the cold exam bed with my hands in my lap, wrists throbbing, heart pounding.
The examination room feels too bright, too sharp, too clean for the mess inside my chest. The door shuts behind me with a soft click, and the moment it does, something in me straightens—some thin, trembling thread of resolve I didn’t know I still had.
“I need to report abuse,” I say.
My voice doesn’t shake. My body does.
The nurse looks up, surprise flickering across her face before she smooths it away with professional gentleness. She hands me a plastic cup—standard procedure, always standard, even when nothing in my life resembles anything close to normal.
“If you can go ahead and give us a urine sample, I’ll call the attending physician,” she says softly. “For wounds or trauma, the specialist has to assess.”
I nod. It’s all I can do. My throat is too tight for real answers.
“I’ll be right back,” she says once I’ve finished and handed her the sample; she slips out of the room.
I sit on the edge of the exam table, waiting for the specialist to come in.
Minutes drag by, each one heavier than the last.
When the door opens again, the nurse’s expression has changed. She closes it softly behind her before speaking.
“Beatrice… your test came back positive.” She hesitates, then says it plainly.
“You’re pregnant.”
The words don’t land. They detonate.
For a moment, everything inside me goes weightless, suspended, then crashes all at once. The room tilts. My heart gives a single, violent thud before it starts racing, too fast to keep up with.
Pregnant.
I let out a shaky laugh. “No. No, that—there has to be a mistake. I’m not… I can’t be pregnant.”
But the denial collapses almost immediately.
That night. The memory hits hard and fast.
“God… no. No.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not like this.
And if he finds out, he won’t let me go.
He’ll trap me in ways I won’t be able to fight. Or worse— he’ll take the baby—my baby.
He can’t know. He can never know.
My eyes burn, vision swimming as the truth tightens around me like a vice.
The nurse is still speaking—talking about confirming the test, about next steps, about options—but her words float somewhere above me, muffled and distant, like they’re underwater.
All I can hear is the echo of a truth I’m not prepared for.
“I… I need to go,” I manage, though the syllables scrape out of a throat that barely works.
“Beatrice, you asked to report an abuse,” the nurse reminds me gently. “You don’t have to do this alone. We can bring the specialist in—”
But I’m already stepping back, my body moving before my mind can catch up, panic clawing up my ribs, hot and electric.
“I’ll come back,” I say, and the lie tastes metallic on my tongue.
The nurse reaches out, but I pull away, grabbing my bag, grabbing the door, grabbing the only exit from a room that suddenly feels too small, too loud, full of truths I’m not ready to claim.
I slip out before she can stop me.
The hallway blurs as I walk.
All I can feel is the weight of two words pressing against my ribs like a heartbeat I can’t escape.
I’m pregnant.
In the span of ten minutes my entire world has been torn open, rearranged, and redefined, and all that matters now is the life inside me, a life I will protect with every ounce of strength I have left.
But to do that, I need more power than I’ve ever had at my disposal, more protection than I can summon on my own.
I dig through my bag with trembling fingers, pull out my phone, and dial the one number I promised myself I would never call again. I press the phone to my ear and hold my breath.
He answers on the first ring.
“Beatrice?” His voice is thick and velvet-smooth, and hearing it unravels something I’ve been holding too tightly. “What happened?”
“I—sorry,” I manage, my voice no stronger than a whisper. “I didn’t mean to call out of the blue.”
“My phone is always available for you,” he says, the warmth in his tone brushing against me like a hand I didn’t ask for but suddenly need. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I pause. I have to choose every word with care. No one should know. Not until I’m somewhere beyond reach. Not until I’m safe.
“I need your help,” I say.
There’s a subtle shift in the air over the line, a tightening, as if he’s sitting up straighter.
“What kind of help?”
“Nothing big, just—” My voice trembles, so I steady it. “It’s my parents. I need to get them somewhere safe. Somewhere far from here. Somewhere Giacomo won’t find them.”
A heavy silence fills the line.
“You think Giacomo would go after them?”
“I don’t think,” I say, gripping the phone until my knuckles ache. “I know. I just need a place that’s temporary. Quiet. Hidden.”
He exhales, the controlled kind that betrays the emotion he refuses to let leak into his voice. I’ve learned far too much about this man in too little time.
“I can make that happen,” he says. “Just tell me what you need.”
“Thank you.” My throat tightens, heat pooling behind my eyes. “But I’ll need to leave too. Not with them; I can’t put them at risk.”
“You’re running.”
Images from last night flash across my mind—his body close, his voice against my skin, the truth neither of us dared name—but I force them away.
“You were right,” I say quietly. “I deserve more than what I allowed myself to tolerate. And since you said you were willing to help me, I…”
The words slip out of reach; I can’t find the rest.
“I’ll help you,” he answers, soft but sure. “How soon do you want out?”
Relief floods through me so fast it nearly buckles my knees. “Tonight.”
A beat of silence. Then: “Okay. I’ll arrange it.” His voice hardens with purpose. “Come to my apartment. We’ll plan the next steps, get you packed, and I’ll have my men start on your documents.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice cracking despite my attempts to hold it together. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Beatrice?” His voice changes—gentler, deeper, stripped of the armor he shows everyone else.
“Yes?”
“I got you, okay?”
Something inside me steadies for the first time today. And against every fear clawing at my ribs, I believe him.
“Okay,” I say, and the word feels like a vow.
No matter what comes next, this child—my child—will make it out of this city and into safety. And I will burn every bridge behind me if that’s what it takes.