He stripped me of everything, unaware I carried his child.
“Take it off.”
For one stupid second, I thought Matteo Lombardi meant my coat.
Then his eyes dropped to the diamond necklace at my throat.
“The jewelry. The ring. The dress. Everything I paid for.”
Rain slammed against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Lombardi estate outside Chicago, and somewhere beyond the front gates, thunder rolled over Lake Michigan.
I could hear my own breathing.
That was about it.
His men had gone silent.
Even men who carried guns for a living knew when something was too ugly to watch.
“Matteo,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.”
He looked at me like I was a stain on his marble floor.
Five hours earlier, that same man had kissed my bare shoulder in his bedroom and asked what I wanted for dinner.
Now there was blood on the cuff of his white shirt.
My brother’s blood.
At least that was what I thought.
“Your brother stole from me,” Matteo said. “Half a million dollars. Then he tried selling information to the Morettis.”
“Caleb is an addict. He’s reckless. He’s an idiot. But I didn’t know.”
Matteo laughed once.
No humor.
Just contempt.
“You sleep in my bed, Hazel. You run my kitchen. You hear everything in this house. And you expect me to believe your brother was robbing me under my roof while you knew nothing?”
“It’s the truth.”
I reached for him.
He caught my wrist before my hand reached his chest.
Hard.
I looked down at his fingers around me.
Then back up.
Six months.
That was how long I had belonged to the secret part of Matteo Lombardi’s life.
To everybody else, I was the head chef at his estate.
The big girl who could make osso buco better than his grandmother.
The woman who yelled at armed men for stealing cannoli before dinner.
Behind closed doors?
I was the person he came to at two in the morning when the whole city wanted something from him.
He used to put his head in my lap while I ran my fingers through his hair.
He had kissed every stretch mark I once hated.
He had told me my softness was the only place in Chicago where he didn’t have to be Matteo Lombardi.
Apparently peace had an expiration date.
“Where’s Caleb?” I asked.
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“Tobias.”
His lieutenant stepped forward.
Matteo never stopped looking at me.
“Take Caleb to the docks.”
My stomach dropped.
“Matteo.”
“Make sure he understands what stealing from me costs.”
“No.”
I moved before my brain caught up.
Two guards grabbed my arms.
“Matteo!”
He turned away.
That hurt more than the guards’ hands.
“Please. He’s my brother.”
Nothing.
“Break his legs. Put him on a bus. Send him to Mexico. I don’t care. Just don’t kill him.”
Still nothing.
Then I said the one thing I should have kept to myself.
“Please. For what we are.”
Matteo slowly looked over his shoulder.
His expression changed.
Not softer.
Worse.
“What we are?”
My face burned.
He walked back toward me.
“You cooked my meals.”
My throat closed.
“You warmed my bed.”
One of the guards looked at the floor.
Matteo leaned close enough that I smelled rain and expensive cologne.
“You were convenient, Hazel.”
There it was.
The knife.
And he knew exactly where to put it.
I stared at him until my vision cleared.
Something inside me went very quiet.
Maybe that silence saved me.
Because I stopped begging.
Matteo noticed.
His eyes flickered.
Just once.
“Let her go,” he ordered.
The guards released me.
Then his gaze fell to the ruby ring on my hand.
The one he had slipped onto my finger three weeks earlier while we ate cold pizza in his study.
No proposal.
No promises.
Just, This belongs on you.
He held out his hand.
“Everything.”
I pulled off the ring.
Placed it in his palm.
Then the necklace.
Then the earrings.
My hands had stopped shaking.
That seemed to bother him more than the tears had.
“Anything else?” I asked.
His mouth hardened.
“The dress.”
Tobias looked up sharply.
“Boss.”
Matteo didn’t blink.
“She leaves with what she arrived with.”
So I walked upstairs.
Changed in the servants’ quarters.
Gray sweatpants.
An old Northwestern T-shirt.
Beat-up sneakers.
The clothes I had worn my first morning on the job.
I left the silk dresses.
The handbags.
The winter coats.
The stupid little gold bracelet he bought because I once stopped in front of a jewelry-store window for three seconds too long.
When I came downstairs, Matteo stood beside the staircase.
I expected regret.
That was my last mistake.
He opened the front door himself.
Freezing rain blew across the foyer.
“You wanted loyalty,” I said quietly. “Maybe someday you’ll realize you threw it away.”
His face didn’t move.
“Get out.”
So I did.
No umbrella.
No purse.
No car.
I walked down his driveway in thirty-eight-degree rain while two black SUVs idled near the gates.
Nobody offered me a ride.
At the road, I finally stopped.
Not because I was broken.
Because I remembered what was sitting in the pocket of my sweatpants.
A drugstore receipt.
And a photograph I had taken that morning.
Two pink lines.
Pregnant.
I pressed my hand over my lower belly.
That morning, I had stood barefoot on cold bathroom tile, staring at that test and laughing like an idiot.
I had imagined telling Matteo over dinner.
Maybe he would freeze.
Maybe swear.
Maybe put both hands on my stomach.
Maybe, just once, look happy instead of dangerous.
Now?
I looked back at the giant house glowing behind iron gates.
“You told me to take nothing of yours,” I whispered.
Rain ran into my mouth.
I almost smiled.
“You’re going to regret that.”
I never told him.
I caught a ride from a waitress finishing the night shift at a diner near Highland Park.
She gave me black coffee in a Styrofoam cup and asked whether my boyfriend had hit me.
“No,” I said.
Somehow, that felt worse.
Three days later, I was on a bus east.
Six months later, I was eight months pregnant and serving pancakes at a roadside diner outside Portland, Maine.
Five years later, I owned the bakery downstairs from my apartment.
And my son, Leo, had his father’s eyes.
I thought Chicago had finally forgotten us.
Then, one cold Tuesday morning, the bell above my bakery door jingled.
I looked up.
Tobias Lombardi stood on the other side of my pastry case.
And all the color drained from his face.
Then Leo came running toward me.
That was when I knew five years of hiding had just ended.....
