Chapter 57 - Stella
Stella
Blythe is in the kitchen, baby Sage tucked against her chest, feeding. Exhaustion clings to her face, but somehow her heart still looks full.
In the living room, I shove the coffee table toward the fireplace and stretch out on the rug. Ansel joins me without a word, dropping beside me in silence, the kind that feels like understanding.
Forty-five minutes later, Elaine appears in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her gorgeous brown eyes. She freezes when she sees us sprawled in the middle of the room, then quirks a brow.
“What are you doing, Widow?” she drawls, humor curling in her voice.
I tilt my head back so I can see her upside down and smirk. “Ansel and I are doing yoga.”
Elaine snorts. “Yoga? You’re both are just lying there.” She perches on the couch, curling her legs to her chest, watching us.
“It’s called corpse pose,” Ansel chimes, eyes closed, perfectly deadpan. “And we’re killing it.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about Donovan’s threats, waiting for the other shoe to fall. Every car that slows outside, every ring of the doorbell—it all makes my chest tighten. I’m braced for the revenge he promised me, certain it’s already on its way.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep living like this, jumping at shadows, choking on the silence between storms.
I roll out of corpse pose and push myself to my feet. My eyes find Elaine’s. “Will you come upstairs with me? I need to talk to you,” is all I manage.
Ansel whoops from the floor, throwing her arms up like she’s at a concert. “Somebody’s about to get laid!”
I glance back at her, deadpan. “Do you ever think of anything other than sex?”
Her grin is shameless. “Nope.”
Elaine and I make it to my room, and I start pacing the second the door shuts. The walls feel too close, my chest too tight. She sits on the edge of my bed, watching me, waiting for me to break the silence.
“We know at any moment Donovan can turn around and take everything from me.” My voice shakes, but my eyes stay fixed on her, waiting for an answer I already know.
“Yes, Stella. He made that apparent.” She doesn’t soften it, doesn’t feed me pretty lies.
I stop, the words clawing their way out of me. “I joked with you before about not being a divorcée—about being a widow.” My throat works around the words “bitter” and “sharp.” “But it doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. It feels like the only way he doesn’t take it all from me.”
Elaine doesn’t flinch. She stills, her spine straightening, shoulders squaring in that calm, deliberate way that reminds me she’s spent years dismantling men in boardrooms and cleaning up scandals without ever raising her voice. Her face gives nothing away—no shock, no fear—only sharpened focus.
“Okay,” she says at last, her tone cool, almost businesslike. “Then tell me the plan.”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes. The words stick like glass in my throat. Instead, I sink into the chair by the window, shoulders heavy, chewing at the loose skin around my thumb until it stings.
Elaine watches me, steady, unreadable, like she’s in a courtroom waiting for a witness to break. Her voice is calm, but it cuts straight through the silence.
“You’ve thought about it,” she says. “So tell me what you’re thinking.”
I look at her, her eyes meeting mine and holding me there like I can’t look away. My lungs feel tight as I pull in a breath, steady and deliberate.
“I’m calling Salvatore Ferretti,” I whisper. “My brother.”
Elaine doesn’t react at first. She doesn’t gasp, doesn’t blink—she just sits with it, processing, her lawyer’s mind already chasing every outcome. When she does speak, her voice is low, measured but laced with something softer underneath.
“Stella, baby,” she says, soft but unshakable, her gaze locking with mine.
Her hand reaches across the space between us, warm and steady as it covers mine, stilling the nervous bite at my thumb.
“Do you realize what you’re saying? You don’t ask a man like Salvatore for something and walk away untouched.
Once you step into that circle, it doesn’t let you go.
And your father… he spent his whole life trying to keep that weight off you, to make sure you’d never have to live with it. ”
I turn my hand beneath hers, threading our fingers together, clinging to the peace she brings me. My throat works, the word breaking before it leaves me.
“I know,” I whisper, and it sounds like surrender, like fracture, like the truth finally weighing too much to carry alone.
The silence stretches between us, thick with everything neither of us can fix. Elaine doesn’t break it, not right away. Her thumb traces once across my knuckles, grounding me, steadying me, until finally she says, low and certain, “I’m here when you’re ready to make that call.”
My eyes lift to hers, holding steady even as something cracks inside me. “I’m going to make the call,” I murmur, my voice rough with decision. “But no one else knows. No one else gets pulled into this mess. We’ll weather the storm together.” Elaine nods in approval.
With shaking hands, I grab my father’s old phone and turn it on. The screen lights up, buzzing alive with years of missed calls and voicemails I’ll never open. I ignore them all, scrolling until I find the name I’ve been dreading and waiting for: Salvatore Enzo Faretti.
My thumb hovers over the call button, the weight of it pressing down heavier than the phone itself. If I don’t make this call, everything my father bled for—everything he built to shield me—will crumble.
I press. It rings once. Twice. I almost hang up, praying for voicemail, when a voice cuts through—low, gravelly, and lethal.
“My brother’s been dead two fucking years. I don’t believe in ghosts. So whoever you are… this better be worth waking the devil.”
Fear knocks the wind out of me. My throat closes, useless, like I forgot every word I’d planned. Hi, you’re my brother. Kill my husband? Yeah, that would go over really well. I pace, the floorboards groaning under my steps, the phone hot against my ear as silence stretches.
Silence stretches. Then his voice cuts through again, sharp as a blade. “I might be a sick fuck, but even calling someone on their dead sibling’s phone? That’s beneath me.”
“Sal…” My voice breaks, thin as glass. “Salvatore… It’s Stella.” I swallow hard, the words jagged on my tongue. “Stella Carrington.”
A pause, heavier than thunder. I grip the phone tighter, knuckles white. “I’m your sister.”
The silence on the other end is deafening. Seconds drag until the phone feels heavier in my hand. Then, low and slow, it comes—a laugh. Deep, hollow, cruel. It snakes down my spine like ice water.
“I don’t have a sister.”
My breath stutters, panic clawing at my throat.
“Wait, Salvatore, please.” The words tumble out fast, desperate.
“My dad—Vince—he told me everything. I know you’re Vince’s son.
I know about the affair. I know about the arrangement my dad made.
” I bite down hard on the fear threatening to choke me. “And I need your help.”
The silence returns, but this one’s different—sharper, attentive. Like a predator lowering its head, finally interested in the prey that spoke.
“Careful, little Stellina. Keeping Vince’s sins is one thing. Living with their debt is another. And now you want to add your own debt to the pile? Be sure you can pay it—because once it’s written in, there’s no erasing it.”
The silence hangs, brittle. Then his voice shifts, almost casual, like he’s pulling options off a menu. “What is it you think I can do for you, Stellina? Money? Protection? Pest removal? Something else?”
My stomach knots. I swallow hard. “Pest removal,” I whisper. “My husband. Donovan.”
The line crackles with static, but his reply cuts through sharp as a blade. “Stop. Right there. Don’t say another goddamn word over the phone.”
Fear chills me straight through my bones.
He exhales once, slow, deliberate, before speaking again. “I’ll call you when I’m in town. I’ll tell you where to meet me. And then, Stellina…” His voice curls into something cruel, amused. “…then we’ll see if you really meant what you just said.”
I stare at the phone still warm in my hands, my pulse hammering in my ears. The silence feels like it could crush me. Finally, I lift my eyes to Elaine. “He’ll be here in a couple of days.”
Her face doesn’t change—no shock, no panic. Just a slow, steady nod, like she already knew this was how it would end.
The days blur after that. I go through the motions of normalcy.
Dinner with the girls. Snuggles with my niece.
Hollow laughter that echoes thinly in my chest. At work, I bury myself until exhaustion numbs me, and when I finally make it home, I scrub floors, polish glass, rearrange shelves—anything to keep my hands moving so my thoughts don’t devour me.
But every night, Elaine is there. Every night we lie in the dark, our secrets unraveling between whispers, our fears spilling into the spaces we don’t dare speak in daylight. She doesn’t flinch from me. She doesn’t let me flinch from her.
And each night, I fall a little harder. A little deeper. I don’t tell her—not yet. I don’t know if I’m ready to tell her the truth. But it’s there, coiled and certain, as undeniable as the storm crawling closer with every heartbeat.
She kisses me slowly at first, almost sweetly, almost tender—but I can feel it coiled inside her, the hunger straining at its leash.
Her mouth trails down my throat, teeth scraping, tongue soothing, and when she lifts my shirt, her lips close around my nipple like she’s been starving.
I gasp, arching, her hand pinning my hip as if to remind me I’m not going anywhere.
“Fuck, Stella,” she breathes against me, the vibration making me shudder. Her tongue flicks, her teeth tug, and my back bows off the bed, desperate for more.
Her hand slips lower, fingers skimming over my stomach, teasing the edge of my panties. She doesn’t rush, doesn’t give me what I’m begging for with every broken sound spilling from my throat. She lingers, strokes, and worships—until I’m shaking apart from anticipation.
When she finally slides her hand between my thighs, her growl rumbles against my skin. “God, you’re dripping. You’re always so wet for me, Widow.”
I choke on a moan, burying my fingers in her hair. “Only you.”
Her lips curve against my chest, wicked and tender at once. “Good girl.” She slides her fingers through my slick folds, stroking slow, maddening circles around my clit. “Let me have you, Stella. Let me take you apart.”
The words don’t feel like a command. They feel like devotion, like a vow. And when she pushes inside me, deep and unhurried, my whole body clenches around her.
I cry out, grinding against her hand, but she doesn’t give me everything at once. She builds me slowly, pulling me higher and higher until my nails rake down her back. My pleas turn incoherent, all broken fragments of her name, curses, and worship.
“Look at me,” she growls, dragging her mouth back to mine. I do, and I drown in the feral need blazing in her eyes, in the intimacy so sharp it almost hurts.
Her pace sharpens, fingers thrusting deep, her thumb rolling tight over my clit, and the pleasure slams through me. I come undone hard, crying her name like a prayer, shaking apart beneath her.
But she doesn’t stop. She keeps me pinned, keeps me open, wrecking me over and over until I’m sobbing into her mouth, until I’m nothing but wreckage in her hands.
And when I can’t take anymore, I flip her beneath me, wild and desperate, my mouth trailing down her stomach. Her breath shudders, a low moan spilling from her lips, and when I finally taste her, she curses loudly and brokenly.
Her thighs tremble as I spread them, her breath breaking into ragged pieces when my mouth closes over her clit.
I savor her, slow at first, tongue circling, teasing, dragging her higher, one careful stroke at a time.
Her hands clutch at the sheets, then at my hair, pulling me closer like she can’t stand even an inch of space between us.
“Stella,” she gasps, her voice cracking, my name a plea and a warning in one.
I hum against her, the vibration making her hips jerk. My fingers slide inside her, slick and hot, filling her as I curl deep, finding the spot that makes her cry out loud and sharp.
“Fuck—yes, right there,” she moans, the sound wrecked, desperate. “Don’t you dare stop.”
I don’t. I don’t stop until she’s thrashing beneath me, until her control is gone and her nails are raking fire down my arms. I take her cries into me, drinking down every broken sound she gives.
She shatters hard, her body clenching around my fingers, her legs tightening around my head as if she’s trying to hold on and push me away at once. But I don’t let her. I keep going, drawing out every wave, swallowing her down like I was made for this.
When I finally ease back, she’s trembling, sweat-slick, her chest rising and falling fast. I crawl up her body, kissing every inch of skin I can reach, until I’m hovering over her, my forehead pressed to hers.
Her eyes are wild, glassy with tears and lust. I kiss her slowly, filthy and tender all at once, letting her taste herself on my lips.
“Mine,” she whispers against my mouth.
“Yours,” I breathe back, my voice raw.
We stay tangled like that, shaking, undone, worship and hunger tangled into one, until the silence feels almost holy.
Then my father’s ringtone shatters it, cutting straight through the dark.