Chapter 15
Vivian
Alejandro went to work in minutes.
He called his consigliere, assembled a small army, and mapped out the city like a general on D-Day. His men tracked the black van to a warehouse near the harbor.
“This is a message,” Alejandro said. “They want to prove they can touch us.”
He knew they’d taken Lisa by accident, but that didn’t matter. “No one hurts my family,” he told me, voice like steel.
I wanted to go with him. He made me promise to stay at the estate, surrounded by people who could keep me and the baby safe.
Waiting was torture.
The Bellandi estate transformed overnight: guards at every door, cameras everywhere, the kitchen staff whispering updates in code. I wandered the halls, a ghost in my own home, feeling more protected and more helpless than ever.
But I watched the way everyone—staff, guards, even distant relatives—rallied around me, dropped everything, prioritized my life over their own.
This was loyalty. This was family.
Alejandro led the assault himself.
He moved through the warehouse like a shadow, his men flanking every entrance. There were gunshots, shouts, the sound of glass shattering.
He found Lisa tied to a chair, a bruise blooming across her cheek. The men guarding her were already unconscious. Alejandro freed her and called his security detail.
Lisa sobbed when she saw him, not out of fear, but gratitude.
“You saved me,” she said, voice shredded.
He wrapped her in a jacket and walked her out, shielding her from the carnage.
Outside, the police were already arriving. Alejandro handed Lisa to the medics and let his consigliere handle the rest.
He stayed until he knew she was safe, then left, face unreadable.
They brought Lisa back to the estate.
She was pale, shaking, but alive.
I hugged her, and she didn’t let go for a long time.
When she finally looked at me, her eyes were different. Softer. Real.
“I never understood,” she whispered, “what it was like to have someone risk everything for you.”
She started crying. I cried with her.
Alejandro stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching us with a kind of relief I’d never seen before.
The next day, law enforcement raided the rival family’s compound. Their boss was arrested. The threat vanished overnight.
Alejandro called it “the end of a very old chapter.”
I called it a miracle.
Lisa stayed with us for a while.
She asked if she could help around the estate, even learned to cook with the staff. She played with my baby bump, talked to it, promised to be a better aunt than she ever was a sister.
Sometimes, I almost believed her.
Three days later, the phone rang at dawn.
It was the police.
Ryan had vanished. He missed his court date. Left his car at the edge of a cliff.
No note. No goodbye.
Just a rumor: he was running from the only thing that had ever scared him.
Holy. Freaking. Heck.
And for the first time, I wondered if I’d ever see him again.