Chapter One

The phone’s cold glow stabbed at my eyes. The words on the screen were from Cecilia.

“The spot you bit last night still hurts… but I like it.”

“She’s playing gallery duchess again today? Hilarious. You said my hips when I move are the real art.”

“I learned a new routine. Just one ribbon. Want to be my first audience, Godfather?”

The last one, ten minutes ago: “Luca! Razor Gang guys are in the back alley! They know I’m your girl—they’re going to ‘teach’ me a lesson! Please, come quick! I’m so scared!”

I heard an engine roar, ripping through the mansion’s stillness. Footsteps—heavy, urgent—hammered the stairs. The study door was shoved open.

Luca stood in the doorway, his black shirt slightly rumpled, his breath not quite steady. His gray-blue eyes flicked over me, landed on the phone clenched in my hand, and sharpened in an instant.

“Elvira,” he said low, “my phone.”

I turned the screen toward him. The obscene flirting. The latest plea for help. In the stark light, there was nowhere for it to hide. My fingertips were ice-cold.

“Cecilia. The ‘Razor Gang’?” My voice was so calm it startled even me.

He strode over, yanked the phone from my hand, and skimmed fast. His jaw tightened.

“She’s in trouble.” His fingers were already tapping out a reply.

“What kind of trouble needs you to go in person?” I watched him. “The Razor Gang has a ceasefire with us. If they really wanted to touch one of your girls, they wouldn’t be this ‘polite’—sending a text to announce it. Doesn’t it sound like… an excuse to get you to show up in the middle of the night?”

His hands stilled. He looked up, his gaze a mix of impatience and offended irritation.

“Elvira,” he warned, “Nightfall is my most important place. Cecilia is the face of it. If something happens to her, I lose face. This is work.”

“Work requires you to tell her her skin is like silk soaked in honey?” I opened another synced photo thumbnail—dim light, red velvet, the smooth curve of a woman’s back, and a man’s hand wearing the family ring resting on it.

That hand—I knew it too well.

Luca’s expression shifted. He closed his grip around my wrist, hard.

“You went digging into me?”

Pain made me clearer.

“You forgot to wipe it clean.” I met his eyes, searching for even a shred of guilt, and found only anger at being exposed—and a cold, blunt honesty.

“Yes, I touched her,” he admitted. He let go, his tone sharp with irritation. “So what? Elvira, I’m Luca Cosio. Do you really think there’s only going to be one woman at my side? It’s just entertainment. But you’re my lady. That doesn’t change. You know that.”

“Entertainment for four months? Sleeping over at her apartment?” My throat tightened. “Do you remember the last time I told you my stomach hurt? What day it was?”

He froze for a beat.

Then the phone in his palm buzzed sharply—an incoming call: “Viper S.”

“I have to go.” He glanced at me one last time. His eyes were complicated, but decision beat everything. “We’ll talk about this when I’m back. Don’t do anything stupid. Stay home.”

He turned and left. The engine roared again and disappeared into the night.

I stood alone in the cold luxury of the study. The image of a rainy night when I was seventeen—him pulling me from the hands of street trash, giving me a “home” and an “identity”—shattered into pieces.

No wedding. Only the elders as witnesses, and a key to the old estate. He’d said that was a promise stronger than any law.

Three years. I’d worked to play “Mrs. Cosio,” manage the business, memorize every detail, silently bandage him when he came home bleeding.

Turns out the promise had already weathered away.

My hand drifted, unconscious, to my lower belly.

Two weeks late.

An hour later, an encrypted message confirmed it: last night Luca had bought out Nightfall, staged a “hero saves the beauty,” and left holding Cecilia.

Another came from my private doctor: “Ma’am, the test confirms pregnancy, approximately five weeks.”

I called Luca.

It rang for a long time before he picked up. In the background: pounding music and a woman’s giggle.

“Elvira? We’ll talk when I get back,” he said, impatient.

“Luca. I’m pregnant.”

A hard silence on the other end—then Cecilia’s exaggerated shriek.

“Oh my God! Congratulations!”

Luca’s voice dropped, edged with irritation. “…You’re sure? Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I just confirmed it.”

He went quiet for a few seconds. “Listen, I can’t get away right now. Tomorrow I’ll go to the hospital with you. Get some rest. Don’t think too much.” The tone of someone brushing off a problem.

“Luca…”

“Alright, good girl. Wait for me to get home.” The line cut. The dial tone was hollow.

I stroked my belly. Inside it was a life that shouldn’t have come.

Then I sent my doctor a second message: “Book the earliest procedure. Absolute confidentiality.”

Tears slid down soundlessly, cold. I picked up another phone and typed:

“Move the plan up. Phase one—activate.”

The dark was thick.

But I wasn’t waiting for dawn anymore.

I was going to split it open with my own hands.