Second Chance With My Mafia Lover

CHAPTER 2: AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE

"You are going to break up with my son."

The words landed flat in the room, stripped of any warmth, and for a moment the only sound was the rain lashing the windows and the low tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway behind him.

"Like hell I will," I said, and this time my voice didn't shake. The fear that had filled my chest a moment ago hardened into something sharper, something that tasted almost like defiance — copper and adrenaline, sitting bitter at the back of my tongue.

Leonard studied me the way a man studies a problem he's already solved in his head, just waiting for reality to catch up. He was still in his overcoat, black wool beaded with rain, and every few seconds a drop slid from his shoulder and darkened a small circle on the hardwood floor. His eyes never left mine. Then, almost lazily, he reached into his coat pocket, the leather of his glove creaking faintly in the silence.

"I thought you might need a little more persuasion."

He turned his phone toward me, the screen's blue-white glow cutting harsh against the dim room, and the floor seemed to tilt beneath me — worse this time than when the men had first come through the door. Adonis. Bound to a chair, wrists lashed with what looked like electrical cord, his lip split and crusted dark at the corner, one eye swollen nearly shut and already bruising a deep, angry purple. His head hung low, chin nearly touching his chest, like it cost him everything just to keep it up. A thin line of blood had dried along his jaw, tracing the shape of his cheekbone. My Adonis. The man who, hours ago, had promised me forever with his mouth still warm against mine, his hands cupping my face like I was something worth being gentle with.

I froze. The phone's light seemed to burn itself onto the inside of my eyelids even after he pulled it away.

"You monster." The words tore out of me before I could stop them, raw and shaking, my voice cracking down the middle. "Did you do that to him? He's your son."

"No son of mine turns his back on the family," Leonard said, and there wasn't a flicker of hesitation in his voice, not one trace of a father looking at a photograph of his own bloodied child. His tone stayed level, almost bored, the way a man might discuss weather he found mildly inconvenient. "If Adonis wants to leave —" he tucked the phone away as casually as he'd produced it, the motion smooth, practiced, "— he'll do it in a body bag."

The rain hammered harder against the windows, a relentless drumming that rattled the old panes in their frames, like even the storm outside understood what was being decided in this room. Somewhere behind Leonard, one of his men shifted his weight, and I caught the dull gleam of a pistol tucked into his waistband, black metal catching what little light there was.

"You wouldn't." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to, thinner, swallowed almost immediately by the sound of the storm. "He's your only heir. You'd destroy everything you've built."

Something almost like amusement passed over Leonard's face, cold and brief, there and gone like a shadow crossing a wall.

"There are other men in my organization hungry enough to take his place. Loyalty is a resource, Nadia. My son has apparently run out of it."

A hand closed around my arm before I even registered movement — thick fingers, a grip that would leave bruises — and then the floor rushed up to meet me. One of his men had shoved me down, hard, my knees striking the wood with a jolt of pain that barely registered next to the terror climbing up my throat. The impact sent a jagged ache up through my kneecaps, and I could feel the grain of the floorboards pressing into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress. Somewhere nearby, the sharp scent of gun oil and wet wool hung in the air, mixing with the ozone smell the storm had dragged in through the open front hall.

"I am not here to bargain with you,"

Leonard continued, looking down at me now, unbothered, unhurried, his shadow falling long and dark across the floor between us. "I am not here to negotiate. I am here to help me make a decision."

"Decision?" I whispered it, though some part of me already understood, already dreaded the shape of what was coming — a cold, creeping certainty settling low in my stomach like a stone dropped into still water.

"If Adonis betrays me for you," Leonard said, crouching slightly so his voice could reach me without him having to raise it, close enough now that I could smell the faint bite of scotch on his breath, "I will kill him, and I will simply choose a more loyal heir to sit where he was meant to sit.

But if he agrees to let you go — to abandon this fantasy the two of you built for yourselves — I will spare his life."

I stayed on the floor, silent, shaking, the cold of the tile seeping up through my knees and into my bones, a deep ache that spread slowly up my thighs. My hands were flat against the wood, fingers splayed, and I could feel my own pulse hammering against my palms.

Then a fist hit the front door.

The sound cracked through the house like a gunshot, and every muscle in my body seized at once.

"Nadia! Open the door, it's me — Adonis!"

My head snapped up so fast my neck ached. For one wild, disbelieving second I thought I'd imagined it, that fear had conjured his voice out of nothing. But it came again, louder, more frantic, his fists striking wood in a rhythm I would have recognized anywhere — the same uneven knock he used on my apartment door late at night, three quick, one hard.

"Nadia, open up! It's me! I promise to come back for you — no one is ever going to keep us apart! Nadia!"

The rain roared against the windows like it was trying to drown him out and failing, the glass fogged at the edges, blurred rivulets catching the porch light in thin gold lines.

Leonard rose to his full height, unhurried, the wool of his coat settling back into place, and looked toward the door with something almost like satisfaction, as if this — Adonis arriving in the middle of his own execution — was exactly the theater he'd been hoping for. His men had gone still, statues in dark suits, waiting on his word.

"Let's see what you decide," he said quietly.

"Come on, Nadia!" Adonis's voice cracked through the door again, raw with desperation now, his palm slamming flat against the wood hard enough that I could hear it shudder in its frame. "No one can ever keep us apart, okay? Nadia — please!"

I pushed myself up off the floor, my palms scraping against the rough grain of the wood, my whole body trembling as I wiped at the tears blurring my vision, the salt stinging where they'd dripped into the corner of my mouth. "No. I can't. I can't do this, I can't—"

"You have to." Leonard's voice was maddeningly calm, a knife wrapped in velvet. "Choose. Your love —"

"Okay? Nadia, please?" Adonis was still pounding on the door, his voice fraying at the edges, unaware of the four armed men standing between us, unaware that his father's hand was already closing around the decision that would end one version of our future tonight. Through the frosted glass insert beside the door, I could just make out the smear of his silhouette, hunched and desperate, rain running off him in sheets.

"— or his life," Leonard finished.

Then, without raising his voice, without so much as a flicker of hesitation, he turned to his men and gave the order — a small motion of two fingers, almost lazy, the kind of gesture a man makes to summon a waiter. I watched two of them move toward the door, weapons rising from their holsters with a soft metallic hiss, and understanding hit me like ice water down my spine, freezing every thought in my head into a single, screaming point.

"Wait — no, no, please!" The scream tore out of me before I'd even decided to make a sound, my hands flying up like I could physically hold the moment back, my fingers splayed against nothing but cold, rain-thick air.

"Please, don't—"

Leonard turned back to me, and for the first time, something almost like patience thinned out of his expression, replaced by cold finality, his jaw tightening, the lines around his mouth deepening into something carved from stone.

"If you don't end it with him," he said, low and even, each word landing like a verdict, "I will make sure you see his body as a corpse tonight."

The pounding on the door stopped for half a second — just long enough for me to hear my own ragged breathing, the frantic drum of my heartbeat, the rain hissing against the glass — before Adonis's fist came down again, harder, more desperate, as if some part of him could feel exactly how close he was standing to the edge of his own grave.