Chapter 5 - The Breach
The revelation of the pregnancy changed everything. Alessandro transformed from a protective host into a fiercely devoted guardian. He doubled the security around the estate. He had his lawyers begin systematically destroying my Uncle Marcus’s shell companies, crippling his cash flow.
But cornered animals are the most dangerous.
It happened three weeks later, in the dead of night. I was asleep in Alessandro’s bed—he had refused to let me sleep in the guest wing anymore—when the blare of the perimeter alarms shattered the silence.
Alessandro was out of bed in a fraction of a second, pulling a matte black pistol from the biometric safe inside the nightstand.
“Stay down,” he commanded, throwing a heavy robe over my shoulders and pushing me toward the reinforced panic room hidden behind the closet. “Do not come out until I open that door.”
“Alessandro, please!” I begged, grabbing his arm. “Don’t go out there.”
“They breached the gate. It’s Marcus’s men. They are desperate.” He kissed my forehead, his eyes wild with adrenaline and love. “I will be right back.”
He shoved me inside the panic room and the steel door locked into place. I was trapped in the dark, watching the security feeds on a small monitor on the wall. My heart hammered in my throat as I watched armed men exchange gunfire in the manicured gardens. Alessandro’s security team was elite, but Marcus had sent a small army.
Then, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was an unknown number. My hands shook as I answered it.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” my Uncle Marcus’s oily, cruel voice slithered through the speaker.
“You’re going to rot in hell, Marcus,” I hissed.
“Perhaps. But not today.” He chuckled darkly. “Your billionaire boyfriend is currently distracted by the cannon fodder I sent to his front gate. But I thought you should know... my best men aren't at the estate. They’re at a little apartment on the South Side. With a mechanic named Liam.”
A cold horror washed over me. Liam.
“If you don't walk out the back service gate in five minutes, Elizabeth, I will blow your best friend's brains out. Bring the ledger you stole from the hotel. The choice is yours.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the screen. Liam. The man who had taken me in, who had fed me when I was starving, who had protected me when I had nothing. I couldn't let him die for my secrets.
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I looked at the heavy steel door. There was a manual override button. I knew Alessandro would never forgive me. I knew I was risking my life and the life of my unborn child. But I had to save Liam.
I pressed the button, slipped out of the panic room, and ran.
