Chapter 9: Two Lines, One Lie

The bathroom door locked with a soft click that sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the penthouse.

Aria pressed her back against the cold marble, her chest heaving. She shouldn’t be here. She should be running—out the door, down the elevator, into the night. But her body had betrayed her. It had been betraying her for weeks. The nausea. The exhaustion that dragged at her bones like chains. The way certain smells—coffee, cologne, the leather of Matteo’s chair—made her stomach lurch.

She looked down at her trembling hands.

The stick rested on the edge of the sink, face down. She had bought it two days ago from a pharmacy three blocks away, paying in cash, wearing a hood pulled low. She had hidden it in a box of tampons in her purse, and then in the back of a drawer Matteo never touched. But tonight, she couldn’t wait anymore. Tonight, she had to know.

Three minutes.

Three minutes that felt like three lifetimes.

She thought of Matteo. His dark eyes, the way they softened when he looked at her. The way he had stepped in front of that knife—no hesitation, no fear. He had married her to save her. He had bled for her. He had given her a world of silk and danger and whispered promises he never spoke aloud.

And then she thought of Luca. His smile, charming and poisonous. The night before the wedding—the night she had tried to drown her fear in champagne, and he had found her in the garden. His hands on her waist. His mouth on her neck. The gap in her memory that she had been too terrified to examine.

She had been drunk. She had been confused. She had been desperate.

And now she might be carrying his child.

Her stomach heaved, and she barely made it to the toilet before she was sick.

When she finally straightened, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she forced herself to look at the stick.

Two pink lines.

The world tilted. She grabbed the edge of the sink to keep from falling. Two lines. A baby. A life inside her, growing, taking root—and she had no idea whose it was.

Matteo’s.

Luca’s.

The names echoed in her skull like a curse.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and the memory came unbidden: Luca’s voice, low and mocking, three days after the wedding. “You think you’re safe because he put a ring on your finger? You think he loves you? He doesn’t even know you, Aria. I do.”

She had told herself he was lying. He was always lying. But now, with the evidence of a child growing in her womb, she could no longer pretend.

She grabbed the stick, wrapped it in a wad of toilet paper, and shoved it into the pocket of her robe. She would get rid of it. She would bury it deep, somewhere no one would find it. She would—

A knock at the door.

“Aria?”

Matteo’s voice. Deep, calm, with that edge of command he couldn’t hide even when he tried. Her heart stopped, then slammed back to life.

“You’ve been in there a long time.” A pause. “Are you sick?”

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “I’m fine. Just… tired.”

A beat of silence. She could picture him on the other side of the door, jaw tight, hand resting on the frame. He always knew when she was lying. He could read her like a ledger, every fear and secret written in the tremor of her voice.

“Open the door,” he said. Not a request.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Aria.”

Her name, a warning.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Pale. Shaking. Guilty. She couldn’t face him. Not now. Not with the truth burning a hole in her pocket.

“I need a minute,” she whispered.

The silence stretched. Then, footsteps retreating.

She exhaled, a ragged breath that did nothing to loosen the iron band around her chest. She had to think. She had to decide. But her mind was a storm, and every thought crashed into the next.

If the baby was Matteo’s, she had a duty to tell him. He would protect her, protect the child. He would move heaven and earth to keep them safe. But if it was Luca’s…

Luca would use it. He would use the child as a weapon, a claim, a way to tear her from Matteo’s side. And Matteo—god, Matteo. He would know she had lied. He would know she had been with his brother. He would never forgive her.

She pressed a hand to her flat stomach, and a sob caught in her throat. She didn’t even know if she wanted this baby. She didn’t know if she could love something that might have been conceived in betrayal. But the truth was, she already did. She loved it fiercely, desperately, with a love that terrified her.

And that love made her weak.

She slipped out of the bathroom. The bedroom was empty, the curtains billowing in the breeze from the open balcony door. She moved quickly, grabbing her purse from the chair, her phone, a wad of cash from the drawer. She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew she couldn’t stay.

She was halfway to the door when the lights went out.

Not the gentle dimming of a bulb—a total, suffocating blackness. And then a voice, smooth as oil, from the shadows behind her.

“Going somewhere, little sister-in-law?”

She spun. Luca stepped into the faint moonlight, a gun in his hand, a smile on his face. His eyes dropped to her robe, to the way her fingers clutched the pocket.

“What’s that you’re hiding?” he asked softly. “Something for me?”

Her blood turned to ice.

And somewhere in the dark, a door slammed open—Matteo’s voice roaring her name.