Page 49 of Daddies of the Underworld

He paused, one hand on the frame.

“If you are lying to me, it will break something I don’t know how to fix.”

His face twisted. “I’m not lying about the money.” He stepped into the blinding afternoon, and I did not stop him.

For two days afterward, Villa Belladonna felt less like a fairytale and more like the inside of a clenched fist. Men searched the terraces, the lemon groves, the beach road, the old staff quarters.

Dante’s guards questioned everyone who had breathed near the east wing.

Matteo moved from meeting to meeting with a calm so precise it frightened people into lowering their voices.

No one accused me…at least, not openly.

The weight of anxious and angry stares followed me with enough vehemence that I started staying in my room, not even visiting Luca’s, Matteo’s, or Dante’s sections of the suite.

I slept badly, ate worse, and woke on the third morning with my stomach rolling hard enough to send me sprinting for the bathroom.

Rosa found me sitting on the cool tile with a damp cloth pressed to my mouth and snapped her fingers. “Physician. Now.”

“I’m not sick.” But I managed to push my hand against the edge of the tub and stand. “I’m stressed and anxious. Maybe I ate something bad last night.”

“You can be stressed in the physician’s room.” She gave me a look that said I’d be better off hammering my head against the wall than defying her. “And if you ate something bad, I would have a dozen others visiting the chrome throne.”

Arguing with Rosa required energy I did not have, so I followed her down a series of corridors and into a room with bare white walls.

The villa physician was a tidy woman with silver hair and sharp eyes.

She checked my pulse, asked too many questions about my mental health and eating habits.

Then, she crossed her wrists over her knees and looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “When was your last menstrual cycle?”

The room tilted sideways so fast I almost slid off my chair.

The calendar in my mind flipped backward with a speed that made the dizzying sensation even worse. “I don’t know.” My hand flattened over my stomach even as I corrected the automatic lie. “I mean, I do. I think. It’s been…late.”

Her expression did not change as she stood and nodded. “We will test.”

I lost focus after that, the minutes ticking past so slowly it felt like I waited an entire day instead of five minutes.

When she returned, she almost smiled while waving a slip of paper. “You are pregnant.”

For a moment, there was no villa.

No missing money.

No Marco running through old service gates.

No men with guns, no stolen files, no walls closing in.

There was nothing but my hand over my stomach and a tiny impossible spark of life where fear had been living.

Pregnant. “But I’m on the pill.” I spoke through numb lips, my brain trying and failing to process the emotions rampaging so fast through my system that I kept going hot, then cold, then hot again.

This baby belonged to the life we had made in the stolen hours of incredible bliss.

This baby belonged to all the impossible things I had started wanting.

She shrugged. “Does not always work. No need to keep taking. Cannot get more pregnant.” She held out a bottle of vitamins. “Take these instead.”