Chapter 1 - The Weight of a LieThe plastic linoleum floor felt freezing beneath my bare feet. Gabriel remained frozen where he stood, his tall frame suddenly looking hollow, as if the air had been entirely sucked out of the room. His eyes were glued to the jagged, raised tissue curving across my skin.
"Clara..." His voice was barely a rasp, stripped of the terrifying authority that commanded the entire Chicago underworld. "What... what happened to you?"
"You want to know?" I laughed, a bitter, broken sound that caught in my throat. "Ask your trusted lieutenant. Ask Daniel Shaw."
Gabriel flinched as if struck. The mention of Daniel's name seemed to snap something back into place behind his dark eyes, though confusion still warred with horror. "Daniel? What does Daniel have to do with this? He's the one who found the tracking logs. He's the one who proved you took the funds and walked straight into Connor Bell's trap."
"Because Daniel made it look that way," I whispered, stepping back until my spine hit the damp plaster of the kitchen wall. "Eight months ago, Gabriel. The night of the warehouse bombing. You thought I vanished. But I didn't leave willingly."
Flashbacks surged behind my eyelids—the heavy scent of chloroform, the sterile smell of a basement that wasn't St. Catherine's, and Daniel Shaw's cold, smiling face as he held a scalpel above my stomach.
"Daniel intercepted me when I was leaving the late shift," I told him, tears finally spilling over my lashes. "He told me you sent him. He said there was an emergency, that you were hurt at a safehouse. I got into his car without a second thought. But he didn't take me to you. He took me to Connor Bell's medical dungeon."
Gabriel's chest heaved. A dangerous, lethal darkness flickered in his eyes—the kind of fury that preceded a bloodbath. "Go on," he commanded, his voice dropping an octave.
"They tied me to a metal table," I choked out, wrapping my arms tighter around my swollen belly. "Daniel stood right beside Connor Bell. They knew about the baby, Gabriel. They knew I was carrying your child. They wanted to destroy you from the inside out, and the best way to do that was to make you believe I was a traitor, and then carve your heir out of me before I could ever reach you."
Gabriel took a step forward, his hands trembling as he reached out, desperate to touch me or perhaps check if I was a ghost. "Why didn't you scream? Why didn't anyone stop them?"
"Because Daniel numbed me just enough," I spat, anger overriding my fear for a brief, burning second. "And when they cut into me, trying to extract the baby to use as leverage against your empire, something went wrong—vitals crashed, alarms started blaring, and Connor's men panicked. They threw my bleeding body into an alleyway in Pilsen thinking I was dead. I dragged myself across three blocks of frozen concrete just to survive. And all this time, you were hunting me like a dog, believing the lies your precious right-hand man fed you!"
Gabriel staggered back, colliding with the small wooden table and knocking a ceramic mug onto the floor, where it shattered into a hundred pieces.
"Daniel..." Gabriel whispered, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. "He told me you fled with Connor. He handed me the bank transfers."
"Because he stole them," I replied coldly. "Daniel has been working with Bell for two years, skimming your accounts and feeding them your shipping routes. He needed a scapegoat. Who better than the outsider nurse who softened the great Gabriel Russo?"
Gabriel dropped his head into his hands. The ruthless Mafia kingpin, a man who had survived turf wars, federal indictments, and assassination attempts, was crumbling right before my eyes.
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"Where is Daniel right now?" Gabriel asked slowly.
When he lifted his head, the grief was completely gone, replaced by a cold, terrifying wrath that promised absolute devastation.
