“What did you say?”
Vito’s roar shook the clinic to its foundations.
He grabbed Marco by the collar, his eyes burning with a wild rage.
“Are you lying to me? Are you in on this act with her?”
“Boss, I saw it with my own eyes…”
“Bullshit! She was fine when I left her. A woman that cunning doesn’t just die!” Vito threw a punch at Marco’s face, stumbling back himself before regaining his footing.
Marco trembled under the weight of his murderous fury, his voice shaking.
“Boss, Mrs. Alessia’s body is in the underground medical room. We confirmed her identity… it’s her. It’s really Mrs. Alessia.”
A primal fear clawed its way up his throat, the gut–wrenching despair of losing a part of himself.
He bolted out of the room.
Scarlett’s voice called after him, “Vito, where are you going? The baby was just born, you can’t leave!”
But Vito heard nothing.
“Get the hell in the car!” he snarled at Marco, who scrambled to follow his frenzied
boss.
Vito’s mind had only one thought: Alessia is acting.
She has to be acting.
He floored the accelerator, reaching the underground facility in less than twenty minutes.
+25 Bonus
The men in the hallway saw the look on his face and scrambled out of his way.
He kicked open the door to the medical room, his breath catching in his throat.
“Alessia, if this is another one of your tricks,” he roared, his voice cracking, “I swear I’ll kill you with my own hands.”
But when he saw the body on the floor, his heart shattered.
The invisible chasm that now separated them was a sudden, suffocating void of pain that nearly killed him on the spot.
Alessia lay in a pool of blood, her face as white as paper.
Her stomach was flat, all traces of pregnancy gone.
The snakebite on her arm was a sickening black.
Vito’s knees gave out, and he collapsed to the floor.
The cold–blooded Mafioso, a man who had walked through hails of bullets without flinching, broke completely. He crawled to her side, his trembling hands brushing the matted, bloody hair from her still face.
“Alessia! Wake up! This isn’t a funny joke!”
“Wake the hell up, goddammit!”
He shook her body frantically.
“You’ve taken this too far! This whole act… fine. You win. You wanted me to care,
and I care.”
But Alessia would never answer. Her body was lifeless, still.
“I was wrong… I was so wrong… Please wake up… I’ll give you anything…”
“The West Coast business, it’s all yours! The family inheritance, it’s all yours! Just wake up!”
Vito finally broke, his sobs turning into ragged prayers. “Please, I’m begging you. Just open your eyes…”
2/6
+25 Bonus
Marco and the other men stood back, terrified, having never seen their boss so broken and devastated.
“Boss, let her go. The missus… she’s gone.”
Vito looked up, his eyes blazing with a blood–red fury.
“Anyone who says another word, I’ll kill them!”
“Boss, we need to… handle the arrangements…”
An old retainer watched from the side, unable to bear it. “A normal birth is a brush with death as it is. But to be bitten by a viper during labor… Mother of God, the hell she must have gone through.”
The words pierced Vito’s heart like daggers.
For the first time, he began to grasp the agony Alessia had endured.
And he had thought she was faking it.
He numbly lifted Alessia’s body, cradling her as if she were the most priceless. treasure in the world.
She felt as light as a feather.
The heavy, rounded weight of her pregnancy was gone.
