Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Leave
Twenty-one days after I gave birth to Adrian Moretti’s son, someone tried to kill us inside his own home.
By then, I was supposed to be counting the days until I collected five million dollars and disappeared.
Instead, my mother was living under Moretti protection, my newborn son slept beneath Adrian’s roof, and the most feared man in the city knew exactly how I took my coffee.
None of that was in the contract.
Neither was the way Adrian looked at our baby when he thought no one was watching.
And absolutely nothing in those pages explained why I carried a dead mafia king’s ring beneath my clothes.
My name was Melissa Hart.
At least, that was the name Adrian Moretti knew.
Three months earlier, I had sat across from a lawyer in a windowless office while he pushed a contract toward me.
Five million dollars.
The number looked unreal.
My mother’s cancer was not.
Her treatment had worked once, but the disease had returned aggressively. Insurance covered part of the new treatment. The hospital wanted the rest, and they wanted it fast.
I had already sold my car.
My mother had sold the jewelry my father left her.
I had emptied every account, borrowed from people I hated owing money to, and learned exactly how humiliating it felt to stare at a hospital invoice while someone you loved slept ten feet away.
Then the Moretti family found me.
Their proposal was simple on paper.
Carry Adrian Moretti’s heir.
Deliver a healthy child.
Receive five million dollars.
I knew his name before I ever saw his face.
Everyone did.
Adrian Moretti was the kind of man newspapers called a businessman because printing anything else required courage.
He controlled shipping companies, construction firms, clubs, restaurants, warehouses and, according to whispers, half the politicians who pretended not to know him.
People who betrayed him disappeared.
People who insulted him apologized.
People who owed him money paid.
I had expected a monster.
The first time I met Adrian, he was sitting behind an enormous desk.
In a wheelchair.
That surprised me.
Nobody had mentioned it.
He was thirty-eight, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, with short ash-brown hair brushed back from a face that seemed designed never to reveal more than he intended. His charcoal shirt was immaculate. His eyes were not.
Those eyes measured me.
“You understand what you're agreeing to?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“This is not adoption.”
“I know.”
“The child will remain with me.”
“I know.”
“You will receive the money after the birth.”
“I know.”
He studied me another moment.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because your lawyer explained it six times.”
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
“Most people are nervous around me.”
“My mother is dying, Mr. Moretti. That puts things in perspective.”
Something changed in his expression.
It disappeared before I could understand it.
He signed.
So did I.
Months later, our son was born.
Matteo.
Adrian chose the name, although he asked me first.
That surprised me too.
The delivery nearly killed me.
I hemorrhaged badly enough that I remembered bright lights, shouting, then darkness.
When I woke, Adrian was beside the hospital bed.
He was holding the baby.
Not a nurse.
Not an assistant.
Adrian.
His powerful arms held Matteo as if our six-pound son were something more valuable than everything he owned.
“You stayed,” I whispered.
His eyes lifted.
“You almost died.”
“That wasn't part of the contract.”
“No.”
I tried to smile.
“Should've negotiated a bonus.”
For the first time, I saw Adrian Moretti smile.
It lasted perhaps two seconds.
I remembered every one of them.
The doctors refused to let me leave immediately. My blood count was low, my blood pressure unstable, and recovery was slower than expected.
Adrian moved me into the Moretti mansion after my hospital discharge because his personal physician could supervise me there.
I protested.
He ignored me.
I demanded a departure date.
He gave me one month.
Then he did something I had not expected.
He moved my mother into one of the best private oncology clinics in the state.
When I discovered it, I found him in his study.
“You had no right.”
He looked up from a file.
“To provide medical treatment?”
“To make decisions about my family.”
“Your mother's doctors said she needed immediate treatment.”
“I'll deduct it from the five million.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Your mother's treatment has nothing to do with our agreement.”
“I don't take charity.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then what do you call this?”
His expression hardened.
“Necessary.”
“Why?”
Adrian closed the folder.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
“Because a child shouldn't lose his grandmother because adults were arguing over money.”
I had no answer.
That was the first crack.
Not in him.
In me.
I had spent months reminding myself that Adrian Moretti was dangerous.
I had prepared myself to hate him.
Hatred would have made leaving easy.
Instead, I began seeing things the city never saw.
At three in the morning, Matteo started crying.
I woke and found the crib empty.
Panic hit me before I heard Adrian's voice from the adjoining sitting room.
“Come on, little man. We've discussed this.”
I stopped at the doorway.
Adrian had Matteo against his chest.
Our son screamed.
Adrian looked exhausted.
“You have food. You're clean. You're warm. Your life is objectively excellent.”
Matteo screamed louder.
I covered my mouth.
Adrian noticed me.
“Don't laugh.”
“I'm not.”
“You are.”
“I didn't know mafia bosses negotiated with newborns.”
“We're at an impasse.”
I walked toward them.
“Give him here.”
“No.”
I blinked.
“No?”
“I've got him.”
Matteo screamed again.
Adrian looked down.
“Apparently, I don't.”
I laughed.
Adrian looked offended.
Matteo stopped crying.
We both froze.
The baby stared up at him.
Adrian whispered, “Did he just—”
“He likes hearing me laugh.”
“That makes one of us.”
But he was smiling.
Those moments became dangerous.
Not because anyone carried a gun.
Because they felt normal.
Morning coffee.
Bottles warming in the kitchen.
Adrian pretending he wasn't listening when I spoke to my mother.
Me pretending I didn't notice when he entered the nursery every night before bed.
Then came the night I found him on the floor.
I heard something fall inside the nursery.
When I entered, Adrian was beside his wheelchair.
His face was white with pain.
“Adrian.”
“I'm fine.”
“You're on the floor.”
“Excellent observation.”
I put Matteo safely into his crib and went to him.
“What happened?”
“I tried to stand.”
“Alone?”
Silence.
“Why?”
Another silence.
Then his eyes moved toward the crib.
“I wanted to pick him up without calling someone.”
The answer hurt more than I expected.
I helped him back into the wheelchair.
His arm rested across my shoulders. Even weakened, he was heavy.
Once he was seated, I crouched to check his legs.
“Don't.”
I looked up.
He had turned his face away.
“Don't what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
His jaw tightened.
“Like I'm broken.”
There it was.
The wound beneath the reputation.
I knelt directly in front of him.
“I don't.”
His eyes met mine.
For once, Adrian Moretti had nothing to hide behind.
No lawyers.
No guards.
No reputation.
Just a man who wanted to stand so he could lift his son.
“You don't know anything about me,” he said.
“Then tell me.”
His eyes searched mine.
“I was twenty-one when I was shot. Doctors said I'd never walk again.”
“Were they right?”
“They usually are.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Something flashed across his face.
Before he could answer, Matteo cried.
I stood.
Adrian reached for him.
This time, I didn't take over.
I lifted Matteo carefully and lowered him into his father's arms.
Adrian's hands settled around him.
The baby quieted almost immediately.
Adrian stared down at our son.
And I realized I was staring at Adrian.
That frightened me.
The contract was supposed to protect us from feelings.
It had clauses for confidentiality, custody, medical decisions, payment schedules and liability.
It had nothing for this.
Nothing for the way Adrian started bringing breakfast upstairs because I forgot to eat.
Nothing for the evenings I massaged his injured legs because medication wasn't enough.
Nothing for how he sat beside me whenever the hospital called about Mom.
Nothing for the day the doctor told us her tumors were responding.
I started crying.
Adrian smiled.
Not the cold smile from photographs.
A real one.
“You heard him,” I whispered.
“I heard.”
“She might make it.”
“She will.”
“You can't know that.”
“No.”
His hand covered mine.
“But sometimes people need someone to believe it before they can.”
I looked at our hands.
Neither of us moved.
That evening, I stood before the mirror in my room and touched the thin chain beneath my sage-green robe.
A silver ring hung from it.
Old.
Scratched.
Heavy with a name no one had called me in twenty-four years.
Romano.
I closed my fingers around it.
I had spent most of my life hiding that name.
My mother had taught me how.
Never tell anyone who your father was.
Never show the ring.
Never return to the old neighborhoods.
And above everything else—
Never trust a Moretti.
Yet downstairs, Adrian was trying to make Matteo stop crying by reading financial reports aloud because he claimed the baby found quarterly earnings soothing.
I should have been terrified of Adrian Moretti.
Instead, I was terrified of leaving him.
My confinement ended in nine days.
Five million dollars would be transferred to me.
My mother would have a chance to live.
The contract would be fulfilled.
I would walk out.
That was the plan.
May you like
Then, three nights before I was supposed to leave, the first gunshot shattered a window downstairs.
And everything I had spent twenty-four years hiding was about to come back for me.
