Four months after I spent one unforgettable night with a stranger, my best friend stood beside Chicago's most feared mafia boss and announced she was carrying his baby. I was holding a mop when she ordered security to throw me out, unaware that **the baby growing inside me was actually his.**

Dante ended the call with a single tap of his thumb.

The silence that rushed into the penthouse was deafening. My breath hitched in my throat as I looked at the dark weapon resting on the marble table, then back up at the mafia boss whose child I carried.

"You think I'm an assassin?" I whispered, my voice trembling with betrayal. "You think I work for the Marcones?"

Dante didn't answer immediately. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass, staring out at the rain-lashed lights of Chicago. When he turned back, his expression was an impenetrable mask.

"If you were an assassin sent to kill me four months ago, you had six hours while I was unconscious to slit my throat," he said flatly. "You didn't. You left five thousand dollars in an envelope on the vanity, though my man found three hundred dollars missing from the stack."

"Three hundred and eighty," I corrected automatically, the words slipping out before I could stop them. "That was the exact cost of Nell's pediatric inhalers and a box of sterile saline bandages. I took only what I needed to keep my sister breathing."

Dante’s lips curved into a faint, predatory shadow of a smile. "Delia claimed she took five thousand to buy a diamond bracelet."

My breath caught.

"You see, Marin," Dante said, stepping slowly back toward me, "Delia knows the script. But she doesn't know the ad-libs."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn object, holding it out between his fingers.

It was a rusted enamel hairpin shaped like a blue forget-me-not.

"I found this tangled in the sheets of my suite the morning you disappeared," Dante said softly. "Delia swore she had never seen it before. Said it must have belonged to a maid."

My hand flew to my hair instinctively. My mother had given me that pin on my twelfth birthday. I had searched my apartment for weeks thinking I'd lost it on the bus.

"It's mine," I choked out, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. "My mother gave it to me before she died of leukemia."

Dante watched the tears track down my cheeks. He reached out, his thumb gently catching a falling droplet, wiping it away with an agonizing gentleness that completely contradicted the ruthless reputation of the Moretti name.

"Why didn't you speak up in the ballroom?" Dante demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Why did you stand there with a mop in your hand and let her treat you like dirt beneath her heels?"

"Because she has my sister!" The shout tore from my throat, raw and agonizing. "Delia cut Nell's funding at Saint Jude's! She has Sutton Vane watching the hospital! She told me if I said a single word to you, Nell’s heart monitor would go flat before sunrise! What choice did I have? Delia has millions of dollars, your entire empire backing her, and I have fourteen dollars in my checking account!"

Dante went completely rigid. The air in the penthouse dropped ten degrees. The slight warmth in his eyes hardened into pure, terrifying obsidian.

"Delia used my name to threaten a sick child?" he asked, each syllable dropping like lead.

"She used your power," I sobbed, wrapping my arms around myself. "She took your ring, she took credit for that night, and now..."

I paused, terror gripping my chest. Should I tell him about the baby? If Delia found out I was pregnant with Dante's child, she wouldn't just threaten Nell—she would kill me before the night was over.

Dante’s gaze dropped. His eyes lingered on the oversized, damp fabric of my cleaning tunic, noticing the defensive way my hands were curled over my lower abdomen.

He didn't miss a thing. A man doesn't survive twenty years in the Chicago underworld by being blind.

He stepped closer, his large, warm hand settling directly over mine, pressing gently against the slight curve of my belly.

I froze. My breath trapped in my throat.

"How far along are you, Marin?" Dante asked, his voice shaking with an emotion I had never heard in him before.

"Dante, please..."

"Answer me," he demanded, his voice thick with raw intensity. "How many weeks?"

"Twelve," I whispered, barely audible over the roaring wind outside. "Twelve weeks and four days."

Dante closed his eyes for a long, shuddering second. When he opened them, a storm raged behind his dark irises.

"Delia claimed she was sixteen weeks," Dante murmured, his voice dead and terrifyingly calm. "She showed me an ultrasound report from a private clinic on Michigan Avenue. She said our child was conceived that exact night."

"The math doesn't work," I whispered. "That night was sixteen weeks ago."

"Exactly," Dante said, his jaw tightening until the muscle ticked violently. "And a woman who was sixteen weeks along wouldn't have a twelve-week heartbeat."

He pulled back, his phone already in his hand. He speed-dialed a number.

"Marco," Dante barked into the receiver the second the line connected. "Scramble the tactical team. I want Sutton Vane brought to Pier 42 alive. And send our private medical transport to Saint Jude Children's Hospital right now. Move Nell Evans to our private ward at Northwestern under armed guard. Anyone who interferes—anyone—gets a bullet between the eyes."

He hung up, sliding the gun from the table into his shoulder holster with fluid precision.

"Where are we going?" I asked, trembling as he grabbed a warm wool coat from the entryway closet and draped it over my shivering shoulders.

Dante looked at me, his eyes burning with lethal intent.