Elena’s voice became dangerously quiet. “How do you know Daniel?”
Dominic watched her too closely. “Answer my question.”
“No.”
“Where is the notebook?”
“Go to hell.”
“I have real estate there.” He leaned back. “Think carefully before you protect a dead man’s secrets from a living one.”
The car turned north toward Lake Forest, where old money hid behind trees and gates. Elena looked out the window because she could not bear to look at him.
Daniel’s notebook was in her apartment, tucked inside a battered paperback copy of Inferno. She had not opened it since the funeral. She had assumed it contained legal notes, fragments of cases, maybe the beginnings of the article he kept saying he would write about corruption and silence.
Now Dominic Moretti wanted it.
Which meant Daniel’s death had not been an accident.
The realization did not arrive like thunder. It arrived like ice spreading through water.
“What did Daniel know?” Elena asked.
Dominic’s answer came after a pause.
“Enough to die for.”
The mansion in Lake Forest did not look like a home. It looked like a courthouse built by someone who expected war. Limestone walls, black iron gates, cameras hidden in tasteful places, windows that reflected the moon instead of revealing what waited inside.
A woman in her sixties met them at the entrance. She wore a charcoal dress and her silver hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. Her face was calm in a way that suggested she had survived storms more intimate than weather.
“Mrs. Park,” Dominic said. “Miss Ross will be in the east room.”
“Of course.”
“I want her fed. I want a doctor here in the morning. I want her belongings retrieved before dawn.”
Elena turned on him. “You are not going into my apartment.”
“Someone is already there.”
“My God.”
“You can hate me after you’ve slept.”
“I’ll hate you before and after.”
Mrs. Park’s expression did not change, but something flickered in her eyes. Not amusement. Not quite sympathy. Perhaps respect.
“This way, Miss Ross.”
Elena did not move. “Does the room lock from the outside?”
Dominic answered before Mrs. Park could. “Tonight, yes.”
“At least you’re honest about the cage.”
“I find honesty efficient.”
“No,” Elena said. “You find cruelty efficient and call it honesty because it sounds cleaner.”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Mrs. Park looked at Dominic as if waiting to see which version of him would answer.
Dominic studied Elena for a long moment. Then he said, “Get some rest. Tomorrow, you start earning back your price.”
Elena laughed once, sharp and humorless. “One hundred million? I have a graduate stipend and half a dead man’s rent. That might take me a while.”
“You have a mind people underestimated. That is usually expensive.”
He walked away before she could answer.
The east room was beautiful enough to make Elena feel sick. A king bed, ivory walls, a fireplace, shelves of books chosen by someone who had researched her tastes, and windows overlooking a dark garden she could not enter. The closet held clothes in her size. The bathroom held products she had seen only in magazines.
Luxury, she learned that night, could be another form of violence when it removed every excuse to complain while still taking away the door.
When Mrs. Park left, the lock clicked.
Elena stood in the middle of the room until her legs shook.
Then she walked to the window, pressed her forehead to the glass, and whispered Daniel’s name for the first time in weeks.
“I think they killed you,” she said.
The room gave nothing back.
At seven the next morning, a doctor arrived.
Elena refused to sit.
“I don’t need a doctor.”
The doctor, a Black woman in her forties with intelligent eyes and a leather medical bag, glanced at Mrs. Park, then back at Elena. “Miss Ross, my name is Dr. Lydia Monroe. I’m not here to hurt you. I was asked to check for injuries, dehydration, and shock.”
“I said no.”
Dominic’s voice came from the doorway. “The doctor examines you, or you don’t leave this room today.”
Elena spun toward him. “Still pretending you saved me?”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Then stop giving orders like I belong to you.”
Something moved across his face, quick and unreadable.
Dr. Monroe stepped between them with professional impatience. “Mr. Moretti, leave.”
Dominic looked at her.
She looked back. “I said leave. Unless you earned a medical degree between crimes.”
For one astonishing second, Elena thought Dominic might smile.
He did not, but he left.
That was the first crack in Elena’s certainty. Not because he had obeyed. Because Dr. Monroe had not sounded afraid.
The examination took twenty minutes. Elena answered questions mechanically until Dr. Monroe asked when her last period had been.
Elena froze.
The doctor noticed.
“Miss Ross?”
Elena tried to count backward, but grief had made time strange. Daniel’s funeral. The week after. The night she slept for sixteen hours. The morning she vomited and blamed vending-machine coffee. The missed date on the calendar she had stopped checking.
Dr. Monroe’s voice gentled. “There’s a test in my bag. We should know before anyone makes medical decisions for you.”
Anyone.
The word landed with all its ugliness.
Elena took the test.
Then she sat on the closed toilet seat in a bathroom worth more than her father’s house and stared at two pink lines.
No scream came.
No tears came.
Only Daniel’s face.
His crooked smile. His hand on her hair. His voice in their tiny kitchen, saying, “When this clerkship is done, we’re getting out from under everyone else’s expectations. You, me, maybe a kid someday, if you want one.”
Someday had arrived after he was gone.
Dr. Monroe crouched in front of her. “Based on your dates, maybe seven or eight weeks. I’d like to do bloodwork and an ultrasound soon.”
Elena covered her mouth.
The door opened.
Dominic stood there, and for once, all his control vanished.
He knew before anyone said it.
Maybe it was Dr. Monroe’s face. Maybe it was Elena’s silence. Maybe men like Dominic survived by reading rooms before bullets arrived.
“No,” he said.
Elena stood slowly. “What?”
His face had gone ashen. “Who is the father?”
She flinched as if he had struck her. “That is none of your business.”
“Elena.”
The way he said her name was different now. Not command. Not ownership. Fear.
“Who?”
She wanted to refuse. Wanted to guard this last piece of Daniel from him. But Daniel was already in the room, in the blood, in the tiny impossible life that had turned her prison into something even more dangerous.
“Daniel Gray,” she said.
Dominic gripped the doorframe.
Mrs. Park whispered something in another language.
Dr. Monroe stood very still.
Elena looked between them. “Why are you acting like that?”
Dominic’s eyes closed.
When he opened them, the man who had bought her at auction looked suddenly old.
“Because Daniel Gray was my son.”
The words did not make sense.
Elena stared at him, waiting for the trick to reveal itself. “No.”
“He used his mother’s name.”
“No.”
“He hated mine.”
“No.”
Dominic reached into his jacket and took out a worn photograph. His fingers, Elena noticed, were not steady.
The photo showed a boy at maybe twelve years old, dark-haired, laughing in front of Lake Michigan. His smile was unmistakable.
Daniel’s smile.
Elena took the picture because her hand moved before her mind could stop it. On the back, in faded ink, someone had written: Daniel, Navy Pier, 2009.
Her knees weakened.
Dr. Monroe caught her elbow.
Dominic did not move closer. Perhaps he knew he had no right.
“Elena,” he said quietly, “I did not know.”
“You bought me.” Her voice sounded distant to her own ears. “You bought your son’s pregnant fiancée.”
“I did not know about the pregnancy.”
“But you knew about Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was dead.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I loved him.”
Dominic swallowed. “Yes.”
Her grief, which had been frozen since the auction, cracked open all at once. “Where were you at his funeral?”
The question hit him harder than any accusation.
“I watched from across the street.”
Elena slapped him.
Dr. Monroe gasped. Mrs. Park took one step forward, then stopped when Dominic raised a hand.
He accepted the blow without anger.
Elena hit his chest with both fists next, not because it could hurt him but because her body needed somewhere to put the pain.
“You coward,” she sobbed. “You let him be buried like he had no one.”
Dominic stood there and let her strike him until her strength failed.
When she finally staggered back, he said, “I stayed away because my enemies watched every mourner. I thought absence would protect anyone he loved.”
“You failed.”
“Yes.”
“Daniel died anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And now you think this baby fixes that?”
His eyes moved to her stomach, then away, as if he did not trust himself to look. “No child fixes the dead.”
“Then what do you want?”
He answered after a silence.
“To keep Daniel’s child alive.”
Elena laughed through tears. “How noble. Is that before or after I earn back my purchase price?”
The words landed.
Dominic’s face changed.
“Mrs. Park,” he said, without looking away from Elena. “Call Abrams. I want every document related to Miss Ross’s debt voided by noon.”
Mrs. Park nodded and left.
Elena stared at him. “What?”
“You are not working off a debt.”
“You don’t get to make yourself decent by changing the rules after you bought me.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because Daniel would have hated me less if I did one thing right.”
The sentence was quiet enough to be almost missed. That made it worse.
By noon, papers were placed on the desk in Dominic’s office.
Elena stood on one side. Dominic stood on the other. Dr. Monroe had left after making appointments. Mrs. Park witnessed the signatures. A lawyer named Abrams explained that the debt transfer had been nullified, that Frank Ross owed Dominic nothing, that Elena had no financial obligation, employment obligation, residency obligation, or contractual tie to the Moretti organization.
Elena listened to every word.
Then she looked at Dominic. “Can I walk out the front door?”
“Yes.”
“Can I go home?”
“Yes.”
“Can I call the police?”
“You can.”
“Will I live through the week if I do?”
Dominic did not answer.
That was honest enough.
Elena picked up the pen and signed where Abrams pointed, not because she trusted any of them, but because paper mattered in a world where men pretended it did not.
When it was done, Dominic slid a folder toward her.
“These are Daniel’s belongings from your apartment. My people retrieved everything before Kane’s men could.”
Elena opened the folder with shaking hands. Inside were photographs, her copy of Inferno, Daniel’s notebook, and a small velvet box that made her throat close.
The engagement ring.
She had stopped wearing it after the funeral because every glance at her hand felt like drowning.
Dominic saw her looking at it.
“He asked me for that ring,” he said.
Elena’s head snapped up. “What?”
“He came to me four months ago. First time in three years.” Dominic’s gaze was fixed on the box. “He said he wanted money. Not for himself. For a ring. I told him I’d buy the biggest diamond in Chicago if he would have dinner with me once a month.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you hated diamonds that looked like apologies. He asked for his grandmother’s ring instead.”
Elena’s fingers closed around the velvet box.
