Pregnant by the Ruthless Mafia Devil

Chapter 3: Tear Up Your Blood Money

For three full seconds, the only sound in the examination suite was the rapid beep of the ultrasound machine.

Leonardo stood motionless between Celia's bare knees, his black leather gloves resting on the examination table as he stared into her flushed face.

A virgin.

In his world, innocence did not exist. Every woman he had ever crossed was calculating and greedy. When his men tracked down the fake identity from Suite 402 yesterday and pulled Celia out of a campus coffee shop after she fainted from morning sickness, Leonardo had been certain of a conspiracy. He assumed the late Dr. Vance had been bribed by a rival syndicate's woman to steal his embryo before dying in the stairwell four weeks ago.

Yet the trembling doctor in the corner held a swab stained with red blood, and the monitor behind Celia's shoulder showed a tiny gestational sac pulsing inside an untouched body.

Celia breathed in shallow gasps, her ears ringing over the hammering of her heart.

Pregnant.

She stared in horror at the black and white monitor beside the bed, where a tiny shadow flickered. For a week, she had blamed her dizzy spells and morning nausea on midterm stress and late shifts.

She had never even let a college boy past a clumsy first kiss. After walking out of her father's mansion, she had guarded her body and her freedom fiercely. Yet while she slept under sedation during what she thought was a harmless allergy trial, someone in this building had violated her and planted a stranger's child inside her womb.

Not just any stranger. The cold-blooded monster standing in front of her.

"You did this to me," Celia whispered, her voice shaking with fury as she glared up at Leonardo. "Your clinic did this while I was unconscious! Get out of my way. I am calling the police and getting a lawyer to shut this place down!"

She shoved at his broad chest with both palms and tried to slide off the table.

Leonardo did not budge. Pushing him was like trying to move a stone cliff with bare hands. Before her feet touched the floor, his gloved hand closed around the back of her hospital gown at her nape, holding her pinned in place.

"The police chief eats dinner at my table on Sundays, and the judges are on my payroll," Leonardo said in a lethal rumble, his storm-gray eyes searching her face from inches away. "Now start talking, Celia Brooks. Or whatever your real name is. My men ran your university records an hour ago. Your social security number belongs to a dead woman in Vermont, and your transcripts were professionally forged. Who trained you?"

"Nobody trained me, you paranoid maniac!" Celia cried, twisting against his grip as the paper collar of her gown tore down her left shoulder, exposing her collarbone. "My roommate's cousin needed a replacement for an allergy study so I could pay my tuition! I didn't ask for your baby, and I don't want anything with your rotten DNA inside me!"

Leonardo's jaw tightened. His gaze dropped briefly to her bare shoulder, where a tiny mole sat just above the swell of her breast, before snapping back to her blazing green eyes.

The scent of wild vanilla and soap rising from her skin was the exact scent that had haunted him four weeks ago when she shoved two hundred dollars into his pocket and called him grandpa. He hated how his pulse reacted to her temper, and he hated the dark satisfaction curling in his gut knowing no other man had ever touched her.

"Wait outside," Leonardo ordered coldly without looking away.

The doctor scrambled out the door, and Marco pulled the heavy oak door shut behind them, leaving Celia trapped alone with the devil.

"Let go of me," Celia hissed, digging her fingernails into his leather-clad wrist. "If you don't let me leave in ten seconds, I will scream until my vocal cords rip, and then I will find the nearest hospital to terminate this mistake myself!"

The temperature in the room dropped to freezing.

Leonardo moved before she could blink. Releasing her gown, he braced both palms on the mattress beside her hips, leaning down until his scarred brow nearly brushed her forehead. The suffocating aura of violence rolling off him stole the air from her lungs.

"Say that word again," Leonardo whispered, his deadly voice raising goosebumps down her arms. "Threaten the life of my child one more time, little girl, and I will find every person you have ever spoken to on that campus and tear their lives apart while you watch. That baby in your belly is the sole heir to the Moretti empire. Until he takes his first breath, your body belongs to me."

Celia's heart hammered like a trapped bird, terrified by the lethal promise in his eyes, yet her pride refused to let her bow. She lifted her chin, her lips trembling with rage.

"I don't belong to anyone," she breathed fiercely. "Not my father, and not an arrogant gangster hiding behind bodyguards. You can't buy me, and you can't lock me in a cage."

Leonardo straightened slowly, a cynical smirk returning to his lips. Reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a titanium checkbook and a gold pen, scribbling a number across the paper with sharp strokes.

He tore the check free and let it flutter onto her bare lap.

Celia glanced down. Five million dollars.

"Every woman has a price, sweetheart. Most just aren't smart enough to hold out for seven figures," Leonardo said, buttoning his charcoal jacket. "Five million now, and another five million the day you deliver my son. In return, you drop out of college, move into my guarded estate tonight, keep quiet for eight months, and sign away all maternal rights the second the cord is cut. After that, you never see me or the child again."

Celia stared at the gold-embossed check resting against her thighs.

Her father had tried to buy her obedience with a Black Card and a society marriage. The frat boy at the diner had tried to buy her dignity with a fifty-dollar bill. Now this heartless man thought he could rent her womb and throw her away like trash for a piece of paper.

Slowly, Celia picked up the check and looked straight into Leonardo's cold gray eyes.

"Is this really how you see the world?" she asked softly. "That everyone is waiting to crawl on their knees for your money?"

"Nobody has ever proven me wrong," Leonardo replied coldly.

"Then watch closely, old man."

Celia ripped the five-million-dollar check straight down the middle. She stacked the halves, ripped them again, and kept tearing until she held a fistful of gold-edged scraps. Drawing her arm back, she threw the paper confetti straight into Leonardo Moretti's face.

The tiny scraps rained over his broad shoulders and clung to his bespoke lapels before drifting onto the floor around his leather shoes.

"Take your blood money and shove it down your throat!" Celia spat, sliding off the table onto her bare feet and standing tall in her torn gown. "I am in the middle of my freshman semester, I have an economics exam tomorrow morning, and I am not dropping out of college to sit in your prison like a breeding cow!"

Leonardo stood frozen amidst the scattered scraps of five million dollars, a muscle ticking along his jawline. For a second, the silence was so heavy Celia thought he might shoot her on the spot.

Instead, his dark eyes dragged down her trembling frame, lingering on the fire blazing in her green eyes.

"You think this is a negotiation?" Leonardo murmured silkily.

"I think you can go to hell!" Celia darted left, trying to sprint past him toward the door.

She made it two steps before a steel arm hooked around her waist and hauled her off her feet.

Celia gasped as her back hit his chest. Before she could kick his shins, Leonardo shrugged out of his black cashmere overcoat with one hand and wrapped it around her thin gown, swallowing her in warm wool that smelled of cedarwood, tobacco, and winter rain.

Zipping her arms inside the coat like a straitjacket, he lifted her straight over his broad shoulder as if she weighed nothing.

"Put me down!" Celia shrieked, hammering her fists against his back as blood rushed to her cheeks. "Put me down right now, you caveman! Marco! Somebody shoot him!"

Leonardo didn't flinch as her small fists bounced off his shoulder blades. Clamping one large palm firmly over the curve of her wool-wrapped backside to keep her still, he strode out of the suite.

In the corridor, nurses and hardened enforcers froze at the sight of the untouchable Don Moretti walking down the hall with a kicking, cursing girl thrown over his shoulder and her bare feet swinging behind his waist.

"Clear the private elevator to the garage," Leonardo commanded Marco without breaking stride. "And send two men to her dorm room. Pack her textbooks and clothes and bring them to the estate."

"Leave my dorm room alone!" Celia yelled, glaring at the back of his dark head as the brass elevator doors slid shut around them. "I have classes tomorrow! If I miss my midterm, I fail the course!"

Inside the mirrored cabin, Leonardo slowly slid her down the front of his body until her bare feet touched the floor, bracing both arms on the glass wall behind her head to cage her in.

"You will take your exams and attend your lectures with four of my guards standing outside the classroom door," Leonardo growled against her ear, his hot breath brushing her temple. "If you try to run, I lock you in my bedroom until spring. If you speak to a single male student on that campus, he disappears. Welcome to the Moretti family, little brat."