Chapter 7 - The Ghost from the Past
Three weeks inside the Lincoln Park estate felt like a lifetime.
True to his word, Alessandro had surrounded me with the finest medical care money could buy. A team of private specialists monitored my health, my diet was curated by a Michelin-starred chef, and my nursing school textbooks sat on a mahogany desk overlooking the estate gardens.
Yet, I was miserable.
I was a prisoner in a palace of glass and stone. Alessandro was busy day and night managing corporate mergers and dodging political opposition, but every evening at precisely 7:00 p.m., he returned to dine with me in the formal dining room.
He was attentive, protective, and disturbingly gentle. He asked about my classes, listened to my medical ethics debates, and made sure I lacked for nothing.
And that scared me more than if he had been cold.
Because beneath the tension of our forced proximity, an undeniable, magnetic pull was growing between us—a dangerous warmth that threatened to erase the lines we had drawn.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when the illusion of safety shattered completely.
Mrs. Gable was downstairs in the kitchen, and Alessandro was tied up in a downtown board meeting. I was sitting at the mahogany desk in my suite, highlighting a pharmacology textbook, when a sharp, jarring sound echoed through the mansion.
Clatter.
A distant ceramic vase shattering against marble in the grand foyer.
My heart skipped a beat. I froze, listening intently.
Heavy, hurried footsteps were climbing the grand staircase—not the smooth, measured stride of the estate guards, but rushed, clumsy, desperate footsteps.
I stood up slowly, my hand trembling as I reached for the heavy crystal paperweight on the desk.
The door to my suite flew open, crashing against the wall with a loud bang.
Standing in the doorway was a man I hadn't seen in three years.
He wore a cheap, stained leather jacket, his eyes bloodshot, his stubble unkempt, and a jagged scar running along his jawline—a face from the darkest chapter of my past in New York.
“Well, well, well,” Marcus sneered, stepping into the room and locking the door behind him with a heavy click. “Look at little Elizabeth living high on the hog in a billionaire’s mansion. You thought you could run away from your debts and hide out in Chicago, didn't you?”
My breath caught in my throat. The room spun wildly.
“Marcus,” I choked out, backing away until my legs hit the bed. “How... how did you find me?”
“Let’s just say when a local waitress suddenly gets scooped up by Alessandro Vitali’s private security detail and moved into a Lincoln Park fortress, people in the underground talk,” Marcus grinned maliciously, pulling a small, snub-nosed revolver from his waistband. “And when you owe bad men a lot of money in New York, a connection to a billionaire makes you worth a fortune in leverage.”
Terror, cold and absolute, paralyzed my veins.
He knew about the baby. Or at least, he knew I was tied to Alessandro. And if Marcus got his hands on me, he would use me to bleed the Vitali empire dry—or kill us both if things went south.
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“Get out,” I whispered, my voice shaking.
“Oh, I’m not leaving without my payday, sweetheart,” Marcus laughed, taking a slow step toward the bed. “And lucky for me, Mr. Vitali is about to find out just how expensive his new girlfriend really is.”
