Chapter 10: The Choice That Kills

The door to the study hung off its hinges.

Matteo Vitale filled the threshold, chest heaving, tie long gone, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled past his forearms. His gaze swept the room—Aria pressed white-faced against the desk, and Luca Bellandi three paces away, gun loose at his side like a man holding a cigarette, not a weapon.

Luca only smiled. “Matteo. Right on time.”

“Touch her and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Luca’s smile never wavered. “You’ve been threatening me since we were twelve, cousin. You still haven’t managed it.”

Cousin.

Aria’s knees nearly buckled. The word landed like a fist to her ribs. All this time—the shadow in her apartment, the letters, the silk ribbon on the doorstep—it was blood. Vitale blood.

“Aria.” Matteo’s voice cut through her spiral, low and rough. “Come here. Now.”

She didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her hand stayed locked over her robe pocket, over the small white stick she’d hidden there, over the two pink lines that had rearranged her entire universe three hours ago.

Luca saw the gesture. Of course he saw it.

“Interesting,” he murmured, holstering the gun with a click that echoed like a gunshot in the silence. “You’re trembling, principessa. And you weren’t, a minute ago. Before I mentioned the baby.”

The floor fell out from under her.

Matteo went utterly still. The kind of still that comes before the storm, before the blood, before the body hits the floor. “What did you say?”

“You didn’t know?” Luca’s brows rose in mock surprise, and he laughed—a soft, terrible sound. “Oh. Oh, this is better than I planned. She hasn’t told you.”

“Aria.” Matteo was moving now, crossing the room in three strides, and his hands caught her shoulders with a grip hard enough to bruise. His eyes—dark, desperate, wild—searched her face. “Aria, look at me. Is it true?”

She couldn’t lie. Not to him. Not with his hands on her and his heart in his throat.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I found out tonight.”

Something broke open in his face. For one impossible second, Matteo Vitale—the man who owned half of Chicago’s underground and never flinched at gunfire—looked like a boy who’d just been handed the world.

Then Luca spoke again.

“You see the problem, don’t you, Matteo? Or should I spell it out?” He stepped closer, circling them both like a wolf with two wounded deer. “She was mine first. The engagement, the contract, the alliance—our families agreed. You broke that. You stole my bride. And now there’s a child.”

“There’s my child,” Matteo snarled.

“Is there?” Luca tilted his head. “Is there, really? Because from where I stand, she was wearing my ring on her finger the night you dragged her out of my house. She’s still legally bound to me. And a paternity test can be… arranged. Interpreted. Understood in many ways.”

“You’d lie about a child—”

“I’d do anything.” Luca’s voice dropped, and for the first time, the charm peeled away, revealing the rot beneath. “Anything to make you suffer the way you made me suffer six years ago. You think I forgot what you did to Valentina?”

Matteo’s face went gray.

Aria’s blood pounded in her ears. Valentina. She’d heard the name once, whispered by the housekeeper, followed by a quick sign of the cross and silence.

“This isn’t about Valentina,” Matteo said, low and dangerous.

“Everything is about Valentina.” Luca pulled an envelope from his jacket—thick, official, stamped with the crest of the Five Families Council. “The Council meets in three days. I’ll be filing suit for breach of contract, wrongful interference, and custody of the unborn heir of the Bellandi line. You’ll be summonsed, disgraced, and stripped of everything your father bled for.”

“You’ll start a war,” Matteo said.

“I already started it.” Luca’s eyes slid to Aria, and his smile softened into something worse than cruelty—something tender. “The only question is what she chooses. Because here’s my ultimatum, principessa. Come back to me willingly—say the words in front of the Council—and I’ll drop everything. No war. No scandal. Your mother walks free from my brother’s debt. Your sister keeps her scholarship. And the child—” he paused, letting the word hang, “—grows up with a name, a legacy, a father. Me.”

“And if she refuses?” Matteo’s voice was ice.

Luca shrugged. “Then I file the suit. The Council rules the marriage valid, the child contested, and every man you love dies before the month is out—starting with her.”

The room went silent.

Aria felt her lungs stop working. Her mother. Her little sister, Mia, who thought she’d escaped the neighborhood, who sent her texts with too many emojis and dreams too big for their family name. All of it—all of them—hanging on three days and one word.

Matteo turned to her. His hands slid from her shoulders to her face, cupping her jaw like she was made of glass, like she was the only thing in the world.

“Aria.” His thumb traced her cheek. “Whatever you choose, I’ll burn the city down to protect you. You know that.”

“She knows it,” Luca said softly from behind. “That’s why she’ll choose well.”

Three days.

One choice.

And somewhere beneath the terror, beneath the impossible weight of it, something else stirred in Aria—a small, fierce flame that whispered: no man decides my life. Not even the ones I love.

She lifted her chin. Met Luca’s stare. And said the two words that made Matteo’s grip tighten and Luca’s smile finally falter:

“Get out.”

Luca’s eyes flickered—surprise, then something colder. He reached for the door, then paused, looking back over his shoulder.

“Three days, principessa. And when you come to me—because you will—bring the test. I want to see those two lines with my own eyes.”

The door swung shut behind him.

For one heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then Matteo sank to his knees in front of her, pressed his forehead to the curve of her stomach, and whispered, “He’ll never touch you. He’ll never touch this baby. I swear it on my father’s grave.”

Aria buried her fingers in his hair, trembling—and didn’t tell him the truth that had been burning behind her teeth all along.

The truth she’d seen in Luca’s eyes just before he left.

He wasn’t bluffing about the test.

Because he already knew the baby was Matteo’s.

Which meant he had something else planned. Something worse than a lie.

And she had three days to find out what—before everyone she loved paid the price.