Chapter10
1132 Words
Elena's POV
The beach house looked exactly the same. White shutters, blue door, the broken step on the porch that Dante never fixed. Five years vanished the moment I stepped inside.
"I'll keep watch outside," Izzy said, sensing the tension. "You two figure your s**t out."
Dante locked the door behind us. The interior was clean, lived-in. "You've been here recently."
"Every few months. Couldn't let it fall apart." He moved to the kitchen, started making coffee. His hands shook slightly. "Stupid, right? Keeping a house for a dead woman."
"I'm not dead."
"No. You're just the person who let me think you were." He set down the coffee pot harder than necessary. "Five years, Elena. For five years I blamed myself. Thought I'd kill you by pushing you away."
"You did push me away."
"I was trying to protect you! My family, the merger, the threats—it was all spinning out of control. Cassandra's father said if I didn't marry her, he'd destroy you. Tank your career, fabricate malpractice suits, make sure you never work again."
I froze. "What?"
"Richard Castellano doesn't make empty threats. He had files on you, on your family, on every patient you'd ever treated. He was looking for anything he could weaponize." Dante's voice cracked. "So I chose the merger. Married Cassandra. Figured if I gave him what he wanted, he'd leave you alone."
"You never told me."
"Because you would've fought back. And you would've lost." He turned to face me. "I thought I was saving you. Instead, I destroyed us both."
The coffee maker beeped. Neither of us moved.
"The night you disappeared," Dante continued, "I got a call. Someone saying they had you. That if I didn't transfer fifty million dollars, they'd kill you. I paid it. Every cent. And then I got a photo of a car in the river. Your car."
My stomach twisted. "Who called you?"
"I don't know. Burner phone, voice distorted. I hired investigators, but the trail went cold." He poured two cups with mechanical precision. "The police found your DNA in the car. Your purse, your phone. Everything pointed to an accident, but I knew better. Someone staged it."
"It was me," I admitted. "I staged my own death."
"Why?"
"Because I was pregnant, and Richard Castellano's threats didn't stop with you. He came to me three weeks before I disappeared. Said if I didn't leave town permanently, he'd make sure my baby never made it to term. Hospital accidents happen, he said. Especially in maternity wards."
Dante's cup shattered on the floor. "He threatened Aiden?"
"He threatened both of us. So I ran. Faked the crash, used connections from medical school to create a new identity, and disappeared." I met his eyes. "The fifty million you paid? That wasn't a ransom. That was Richard's price for letting me vanish. He used a middleman so you'd never know."
"That son of a bitch." Dante's fists clenched. "He played with us both."
"And now Cassandra's playing the same game. She knows about Aiden, knows he's yours, and she's using him to control you."
"Not anymore." Dante pulled out his phone, dialed. "Catherine? It's Dante Blackthorne. I need you to file something for me. Tonight."
"Who are you calling?" I asked.
He held up a finger. "Paternity acknowledgment and emergency custody petition. I'm claiming my son. Full parental rights, effective immediately." He paused, listening. "I don't care if it's midnight. File it electronically. I want it timestamped before Cassandra's petition hits the system."
He hung up, looked at me. "I should've asked first. But I'm not letting her take him."
"You can't just claim him without proof."
"I have proof. Or I will in three hours." He showed me his phone. A mobile DNA testing service, scheduled for three AM. "They'll come here, take samples from both of us, rush the results. By the time court opens tomorrow, I'll have documentation."
"Dante—"
"I know I don't deserve him. I know I failed you both. But I'm not failing again." His voice was steel. "Cassandra wants a fight? She'll get one. But she's not taking my son."
My phone buzzed. A text from Lucian: *Check the thumb drive. Now.*
I pulled out my laptop, plugged in the drive. Financial records filled the screen. Wire transfers, shell companies, a paper trail leading from Marcus's accounts to the security firm Lucian mentioned.
"Look at this." I turned the screen toward Dante. "March fifteenth. Marcus transferred two hundred thousand to Sentinel Security. That's two days before you were shot."
Dante leaned closer, scanning the documents. "Sentinel Security. They were investigated last year for corporate espionage. Case was dropped due to lack of evidence."
"Because someone paid to make it disappear. Look at the next transaction."
Another transfer. Five hundred thousand from a Cayman Islands account to the lead investigator's offshore holdings. The investigator's name was familiar.
"Detective Damian Cross," I read aloud. "He's the one who arrested me tonight."
"Cross is dirty." Dante pulled out his phone again. "I'm calling the DA."
"Wait." I grabbed his wrist. "If Cross is involved, the whole department might be compromised. We need more than financial records. We need proof of what Marcus hired them to do."
"How do we get that?"
"By making him think he won." I pulled up a new document on the laptop. "We leak that I'm cooperating with police. That I'm giving a statement tomorrow implicating you in financial fraud. Marcus will think you're vulnerable, distracted. He'll move on the company."
"That's insane."
"It's bait. When he makes his move, we'll be ready. Lucian can document everything, and we'll have him on attempted corporate theft."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"Then we'll have tried everything." I met his eyes. "But I'm not running again. Not from Marcus, not from Cassandra, and not from this."
Dante studied me for a long moment. "You've changed."
"I had to. The girl you knew couldn't have survived the last five years."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you become this person."
"You were busy becoming someone else too."
He moved closer. "I never stopped loving you, Elena. Even when I thought you were dead. Even when I married Cassandra. You were always there, always the one I—"
The window exploded inward. Glass shattered across the floor. A canister rolled to a stop between us, hissing smoke.
"Gas!" Dante grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the back door.
Too late. The world tilted, my vision blurring. I heard Izzy screaming outside, heard gunfire, and then nothing.
I woke up in the back of a moving van, hands zip-tied, head pounding. Dante was beside me, still unconscious.
Across from us sat Marcus, smiling.
"Hello, Elena. We have so much to discuss.”
- Writer
