Pregnant by the Ruthless Mafia Devil

"Read the medical report again," Leonardo Moretti commanded. His voice was a low, velvety purr that made the glass vials on the steel counter vibrate. "Slowly this time. Before I lose my patience and paint these walls with your brains." Celia sat on the edge of the examination table in a paper-thin clinic gown, her bare legs swinging a few inches above the cold tiles. Even with four armed mafia guards blocking the heavy oak door and a six-foot-four titan in a bespoke charcoal suit towering over her like the angel of death, she refused to cower. Instead, she folded her arms tightly over her chest and glared straight into his icy gray eyes. She was nineteen years old, exhausted from college midterms, and furious from the top of her head to the soles of her bare feet. In the corner of the private VIP suite, the female obstetrician was shaking so badly she nearly dropped her digital chart. Sweat beaded along her hairline as she looked from the ultrasound image glowing on the monitor to the thirty-two-year-old head of the Moretti syndicate. "D-Don Moretti," the doctor stammered, her voice cracking in the suffocating silence. "I ran the blood panel twice. I checked the genetic markers against your private file, and I just completed the physical examination myself. There is no mistake. The embryo implanted four weeks ago. She is carrying your son. Your sole blood heir." Leonardo's sharp jaw flexed. A cruel, vindictive sneer curved his lips as he looked down at Celia's flushed cheeks, her wild dark curls, and the lush, infuriating curves her thin hospital gown barely concealed. He hated women to the bone. Every single one of them was a venomous parasite, a calculating liar waiting to bleed a man dry for his power and his fortune. "You hear that, little thief?" Leonardo took a slow step forward, wedging his powerful frame right between her knees and caging her on the examination table. He reached out, gripping her chin between a black-gloved thumb and forefinger, forcing her face up toward the light. "Four weeks ago, you slipped into my private clinic under a fake name, bribed my medical staff, and stole a multi-million-dollar embryo that belonged inside my contracted surrogate. Tell me which of my enemies paid a greedy college brat like you to trap me, and I might let you live long enough to deliver my child." Celia didn't flinch. She didn't cry or beg for mercy like the cartel bosses and politicians who groveled at his feet. Instead, she bared her white teeth in a sharp, mocking smile and slapped his gloved wrist away with all her strength. "Keep your filthy hands off me, you psychotic old man!" Celia snapped, her cat-like green eyes blazing like twin emeralds set on fire. "I didn't steal your stupid baby! I came to this dump four weeks ago for a fifteen-hundred-dollar overnight allergy trial so I could pay my fall semester tuition! If your incompetent doctors put something inside me while I was sedated, you are the one going to prison, not me!" "Still playing pure and innocent?" Leonardo let out a dark, humorless laugh that sent a violent shiver straight down her spine. Without taking his predatory gray eyes off her mouth, he tilted his head toward the trembling physician in the corner. "Doctor. Tell this little actress what else your physical exam proved. Let us hear just how many men she has entertained in her college dorm before she decided to extort the Moretti empire." Hot, blinding humiliation burned in Celia's throat. Her small hands curled into fists on the edge of the mattress as she pulled her foot back, ready to kick the arrogant bastard right between his legs. "Go to hell!" "Boss, please listen to me," the doctor whispered, her face draining of all color as she clutched the metal tablet against her lab coat. "That is what I have been trying to tell you since you walked in. When I performed the pelvic exam ten minutes ago... she bled." Leonardo went completely still. The air in the room seemed to freeze solid. "Speak plainly." "She has never been touched by a man, Don Moretti," the doctor breathed into the dead quiet of the suite. "Her hymen was completely intact. The girl... she is a virgin." For the first time in thirty-two years, the ruthless devil froze, staring down at the nineteen-year-old girl glaring daggers straight into his soul. Four Weeks Earlier The tall glass of strawberry milkshake shattered against the checkered floor of the Starlight Diner, splattering pink ice cream all the way up Celia's calves. "Oops," the frat boy in the crimson varsity jacket drawled, leaning lazily out of his red vinyl booth. His watery blue eyes dragged slowly up Celia's long legs, lingering on the way her faded black jeans hugged the round curve of her hips before stopping at her fitted diner shirt. "My hand slipped, sweetheart. Why don't you get down on your knees and wipe that up for us?" His three teammates snickered around a basket of greasy onion rings. Celia stood motionless in the center of the aisle with a plastic tray balanced on her palm. She had been on her feet for seven straight hours after three morning lectures, her lower back throbbed, and she was still fourteen hundred dollars short on her fall university tuition installment. If she didn't walk into the campus bursar's office with a certified check by nine o'clock Monday morning, the registrar would cancel her enrollment. She took a slow breath through her nose. With her thick dark curls piled into a messy knot on top of her head, high cheekbones, full rosebud lips, and striking green eyes, Celia was used to men staring at her. She was also very good at making them regret it. "Your hand slipped," Celia repeated, her voice as sweet as warm honey. "Yeah, babe. Real slippery glass." The varsity player flashed a cocky grin and pulled a crisp fifty-dollar bill from his wallet, waving it between two fingers right at the level of her waist. "Bend over and clean it up nice and slow, and this fifty has your name all over it." Celia smiled back at him, her dimples flashing. She reached out, plucked the fifty-dollar bill cleanly from his fingers, and tucked it deep into her apron pocket. Then, before anyone in the booth could blink, she grabbed the full glass pitcher of ice water sitting on the corner of their table and dumped the entire freezing contents straight into his lap. Heavy ice cubes rattled against his belt buckle. The frat boy howled like a scalded dog, bolting upright and slamming his thighs against the underside of the table. "What the hell is wrong with you, you crazy b***h!" he roared, clawing frantically at his soaked jeans. "My hand slipped," Celia said brightly, setting the empty pitcher back down with a polite little click. "Keep the change, Romeo. Looks like you needed cooling down way more than I needed a tip." Behind the counter, her manager, Sal, buried his face in his hands and groaned. "Celia! That is the third customer you've drowned this month! Take off the apron, pack your bag, and don't come back!" Ten minutes later, Celia stood beneath the leaking tin awning in the brick alley behind the diner, zipping her worn leather jacket up to her chin as the cold October rain poured down. She pulled out her cracked smartphone and opened her banking app. Four hundred and sixty-two dollars. Even with the fifty dollars from Booth Four, she was still nearly a thousand dollars short for Monday's deadline. Right on cue, her screen lit up with a text message from an unsaved number. Her father's chief of security bought a new burner phone every week just to bypass her block list. Your mother heard you were just fired from that filthy diner near campus. Stop dragging the Kensington family name through the gutter. A Maybach is parked outside your dorm gates right now. Come home tonight, wear the dress your mother laid out for the engagement dinner with Senator Sterling's son on Saturday, and your father will wire your tuition and reactivate your Black Card immediately. Celia stared down at the screen, her fingers tightening until her knuckles turned white. Nobody at her university had the slightest clue that "Celia Brooks," the broke nineteen-year-old freshman who worked closing shifts and ate cheap ramen out of a coffee mug, was actually Celia Kensington, the runaway heiress to a multi-billion-dollar shipping fortune. She could have lived in a forty-room mansion and driven a custom convertible to class. All she had to do was trade away her freedom, bow to her controlling father, and let herself be sold into a marriage with a forty-five-year-old political heir whose eyes made her skin crawl. Instead, on her nineteenth birthday two months ago, Celia had left her diamond jewelry and credit cards on her bed, registered at the state college under her late grandmother's maiden name, and walked out with two hundred dollars in her pocket. She wanted to earn her own degree, work for her own keep, laugh with real friends, and belong to no man on earth. She deleted her father's message and blocked the number. She would rather sleep on a park bench in the rain than crawl back into that gilded cage. Before she could put her phone away, it buzzed again. It was her dorm roommate, Mia. "Celia, don't get on the bus yet!" Mia said breathlessly. "Tell me you still need a thousand dollars before Monday morning." "Unless you figured out how to print hundred-dollar bills in our dorm room, yes," Celia sighed. "Sal just fired me for giving a linebacker an ice bath." "Forget Sal! Remember my cousin Chloe who works the night desk at the Aethelgard Private Medical Center downtown?" Mia lowered her voice excitedly. "One of the girls scheduled for their VIP overnight clinical allergy study just tested positive for the flu. If they don't have twenty healthy girls between eighteen and twenty-two in those beds by nine o'clock sharp, they lose their grant. All you have to do is let them run a harmless saline allergy drip while you sleep for ten hours in a luxury bed, and you walk out at eight tomorrow morning with a certified check for fifteen hundred dollars." Celia's heart gave a hard thump against her ribs. Fifteen hundred dollars would wipe out her tuition balance on Monday and leave her with enough cash to breathe for the rest of the semester. "What about the forms?" Celia asked warily. "I can't put my real social security number into a hospital computer, or my father's investigators will find me by midnight." "Chloe already fixed it!" Mia said quickly. "The girl who caught the flu already cleared the screening this afternoon under the name Sara Miller, and her photo isn't in the chart yet. Chloe printed her barcode onto wristband 402. Just get downtown in twenty minutes, grab the wristband from Chloe at the front desk, and go straight up to Room 402." Celia checked the clock on her screen. 8:32 PM. "Tell Chloe I'm already running for the train," Celia said, sprinting toward the subway stairs.