Chapter 2 - THE DAUGHTER HE NEVER KNEW HE HAD
The armored SUV had barely started moving when Alessandro’s blood reached the cuff of his shirt.
Ella saw it spread in a dark line beneath his black coat.
“Take that off.”
Alessandro looked at her.
“What?”
“Your coat.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have blood running down your arm.”
“It’s a graze.”
“That is something men say right before a doctor tells them they were almost wrong.”
Lily sat between them in a child seat one of Alessandro’s guards had somehow produced within three minutes of the shooting.
The fact that his security team carried emergency toddler equipment should have disturbed Ella.
Instead, it made her want to cry.
Lily still clutched her stuffed rabbit.
Her cheeks were wet.
She watched Alessandro with worried eyes.
“Daddy has owie.”
The word landed again.
Daddy.
Alessandro went still.
Ella’s chest tightened.
Lily had called him that only minutes earlier while gunfire shattered the bakery window.
Fear could make children reach for labels they barely understood.
That was what Ella told herself.
Then Lily held out her rabbit.
“Bunny helps.”
Alessandro stared at the toy.
His expression could freeze a room full of armed men.
It became completely helpless in front of a stuffed rabbit.
“I think Bunny should stay with you.”
“No.”
Lily pushed it toward him.
“You’re bleeding.”
Ella closed her eyes briefly.
Of course.
Lily had inherited her stubbornness.
Unfortunately, she had apparently inherited Alessandro’s persistence too.
He accepted the rabbit.
“Thank you.”
Lily nodded.
Then looked at Ella.
“Mommy, fix Daddy.”
The driver’s eyes flicked toward the rearview mirror and immediately away.
Nobody inside Alessandro Vitale’s security team was prepared for domestic vocabulary.
Neither was Ella.
“Lily.”
“What?”
Ella did not know what to say.
Alessandro saved her.
“Your mother is right. I need a doctor.”
Lily looked satisfied.
The SUV turned away from Evanston.
Ella noticed immediately.
“This isn’t the route to Northwestern.”
“No.”
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“No.”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
“Ella.”
“Hospital.”
“The estate has a private medical suite.”
“I am not taking Lily into your house.”
His gaze held hers.
“You were just shot at in public.”
“You were shot at.”
“Because I covered you.”
Her anger flashed.
“Do not make that sound like I owe you.”
Something changed in his expression.
“I didn’t.”
The words came quieter.
“I would do it again if you hated me afterward.”
Ella looked away.
That was the problem with Alessandro.
He could say something terrifying and something devastatingly tender in the same breath.
For five years of marriage, she had loved him enough to keep explaining away the terrifying parts.
Until she could not anymore.
The explosion outside their Chicago townhouse had ended it.
A bomb placed beneath one of his vehicles.
The blast shattered windows across the street.
Ella had been in the upstairs bathroom holding a pregnancy test.
Positive.
The second line appeared less than two minutes before the explosion.
When Alessandro came inside with blood on his collar—not his blood—and told her to pack because they were moving to the estate, something inside Ella had broken.
She had spent four years waiting for his world to become safer.
Instead, the world moved closer to their front door.
Three days later, she left while he was meeting with his captains.
She drove until sunrise.
By the time Alessandro returned, his wife, his suitcase, and the pregnancy test were gone.
The divorce papers arrived through an attorney six weeks later.
Alessandro signed.
No fight.
No attempt to force her home.
Ella had hated him for making it so easy.
Now she knew he had found her eleven days later.
That somehow hurt worse.
The SUV entered a private underground garage forty minutes later.
Ella stared.
“This isn’t the mansion.”
“No.”
“Where are we?”
“A medical apartment I use when moving through the north suburbs.”
Of course Alessandro owned emergency medical apartments.
The elevator opened directly into a secure suite.
A doctor waited.
So did two nurses.
Lily immediately wrapped both arms around Ella’s leg.
“No doctor.”
“It’s for Alessandro.”
Lily considered.
Then pointed at him.
“He goes first.”
Alessandro almost smiled.
“I’ve been given orders.”
“You’re used to that.”
His eyes flicked toward Ella.
“Not from people under three feet tall.”
The doctor removed Alessandro’s shirt.
The bullet had cut through the outside of his shoulder.
No bone damage.
Six stitches.
Antibiotics.
A tetanus booster that Lily watched with fascination.
“Daddy got shot.”
The doctor’s hand paused.
Alessandro looked at Ella.
She did not correct Lily this time.
Not because she had made a decision.
Because she did not know what the correction should be.
Afterward, Lily fell asleep on the couch.
The adrenaline had finally abandoned her.
Ella sat beside her.
Alessandro remained near the window while Dante spoke quietly on the phone.
The gray sedan had been stopped six blocks away.
The driver was alive.
One of the shooters had escaped on foot.
A second was dead after crashing another vehicle during pursuit.
“Name?” Alessandro asked.
Dante looked at his phone.
“Evan Price.”
“Know him?”
“No.”
“Car registered?”
“Stolen.”
“Phone?”
“Burner.”
“Anything useful?”
Dante hesitated.
“He said something.”
Alessandro’s expression changed.
“What?”
“He wants a lawyer.”
“That isn’t useful.”
“Before that.”
Dante glanced toward Ella.
“He said Mancini should have killed the woman before the kid learned to talk.”
The room became still.
Ella felt cold move through her.
“Carlo?”
Alessandro’s eyes hardened.
“Carlo Mancini disappeared two years ago.”
“Disappeared isn’t dead.”
Dante shook his head.
“We found blood in his warehouse.”
“Not enough.”
“No body.”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
Ella looked between them.
“You told me Carlo was gone.”
“I believed he was.”
“You said he betrayed you.”
“He did.”
“With my schedule.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Alessandro said nothing.
Ella stood.
“Why was I part of whatever he was selling?”
Dante quietly left the room.
Coward.
Alessandro looked toward sleeping Lily before answering.
“Because of me.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Everything was because of me.”
His voice turned harder.
“Carlo discovered that the fastest way to influence my decisions was to know where you would be.”
Ella’s stomach turned.
“Did he threaten me?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
Alessandro crossed toward a locked cabinet.
He removed a thin folder.
Old.
Worn.
He placed it on the table.
Inside were photographs.
Ella leaving a yoga studio.
Ella outside a restaurant.
Ella standing beside a flower shop.
Taken during their marriage.
Before she ever ran.
Her skin went cold.
“What is this?”
“Surveillance Carlo sold.”
“To whom?”
“Three different groups.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was trying to identify everyone who bought it.”
“You let me walk around while people were photographing me?”
“I doubled your security.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
His expression tightened.
“I thought telling you would make you afraid.”
Ella laughed bitterly.
“You thought incorrectly.”
“I know that now.”
“No.”
She pushed the photographs toward him.
“You knew it then.”
He looked away.
That silence hurt.
Ella continued.
“You decided what I should know because you wanted me calm.”
“Yes.”
“You decided where we lived.”
“Yes.”
“Who drove me.”
“Yes.”
“What restaurants were safe.”
“Yes.”
“And when I complained, you told me it was temporary.”
Alessandro closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“That is why I left.”
His gaze returned to hers.
“I know.”
The anger disappeared from her too quickly.
That was worse.
Ella sat.
“I thought you never came after me because you stopped loving me.”
His face changed.
“Ella.”
“You signed the divorce.”
“You asked for it.”
“You could have called.”
“You told your attorney that if I contacted you directly, you would disappear again.”
She remembered.
She had.
“I believed you.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“So I watched from far enough away that you could believe you were free.”
Ella stared.
“That isn’t freedom.”
“No.”
He accepted the accusation.
“It was the closest thing I knew how to give you then.”
Silence stretched between them.
Two years.
All those apartments.
All those careful routes.
The cameras installed by strangers.
The job offer.
The old woman downstairs who always seemed to appear whenever Ella came home late.
Protection she had never requested.
Protection that had probably saved her life.
Protection that was still a violation.
Both things could be true.
Lily shifted on the couch.
Her small hand opened.
Alessandro immediately looked.
That instinct did something dangerous to Ella.
He moved toward the child.
Then stopped several feet away.
“Can I?”
Ella knew what he meant.
Approach.
Touch.
Exist as father.
The question mattered.
She nodded once.
Alessandro crouched beside the couch.
Lily slept with one cheek pressed against the cushion.
He studied her like a man trying to memorize a miracle before someone took it away.
His fingers moved toward one dark curl.
Stopped.
Then gently brushed it from her forehead.
Lily opened her eyes.
“Daddy?”
Alessandro stopped breathing.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
The answer escaped before he could ask permission.
Ella heard the fear in it afterward.
He looked at her.
She should have corrected him.
Instead Lily reached up.
“Stay.”
One word.
Alessandro sat on the floor beside the couch.
“I’m staying.”
Lily closed her eyes.
Within seconds she slept again.
Ella looked at her ex-husband.
The man she had escaped.
The man who had secretly protected her.
The man whose world had nearly killed her.
The father her daughter recognized almost instantly.
Nothing inside her was simple anymore.
Then Dante returned.
He looked grim.
“We searched Price’s phone.”
Alessandro stood.
“And?”
“One outgoing number repeated fourteen times.”
“Who?”
Dante’s gaze moved to Lily.
Then Ella.
“The number belongs to Tomas Greco.”
Alessandro went completely still.
Ella knew that name.
Head of Alessandro’s private surveillance division.
The man responsible for the teams that had watched her for two years.
Dante’s voice dropped.
“Tomas knew about Lily.”
Alessandro’s face slowly changed.
Dante continued.
“He knew before you did.”
May you like
And suddenly Ella understood something worse than being found.
Somebody inside Alessandro’s own protection system had been hiding their daughter from him while simultaneously helping the people watching her.
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