658 Shadows of Vengeance: The Echoes of a Forgotten Empire in a Timeless World

“Emma?” Liam called from the hallway, his boots scuffing the worn laminate floor of our tiny apartment. “You okay? You’ve been in there forever.”

I gripped the edge of the sink, my knuckles turning the color of bone. The two pink lines on the little plastic stick stared back at me, mocking every carefully constructed lie I had lived under for the past two years.

“I’m fine!” I called back, my voice pitching up an octave higher than normal. I cleared my throat, forcing steadiness into the vowels. “Just—bad chicken from the diner yesterday. I’ll be out in a minute.”

A low grunt of concern filtered through the hollow-core door. “Need me to call off your morning shift? You look like death warmed over yesterday, Em.”

“No, I need the hours. I’ll be fine. Go on, you’ll be late for the garage.”

Footsteps receded toward the front door, followed by the heavy rattle of our deadbolt turning. When the door clicked shut, the silence of the apartment wrapped around me like a straitjacket.

I looked down at the test again. Six weeks. Six weeks since the Obsidian Hotel, since the smell of old bourbon and cedarwood, since the man with amber eyes had looked at me as if the rest of the world didn't exist. I had told myself it was a one-time mistake, a fever dream born of exhaustion and too many plates carried across a marble floor. I had told myself that men like Alessandro Vitali didn't remember waitresses once the sun came up.

Wealthy men from the city’s underworld didn't leave tracks, and they certainly didn't leave contact numbers. When I left his suite that morning at dawn, I had left the key card on the nightstand, walked down the stairs to avoid the lobby cameras, and spent every day since praying I would never see him again.

My phone buzzed against the tile floor, vibrating with a text alert.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I scrambled for it, half-expecting an unknown number, an address, a summons.

Liam: Forgot my lunchbox on the counter. Don't forget to take your vitamins, Em. See you at five.

I exhaled a shaky, ragged breath, sliding down the bathroom wall until my knees hit my chest.

If Liam knew, he would lose his mind. Not just because of the danger—though Liam knew enough about the Vitali family to cross the street whenever one of their black town cars idled too long near our neighborhood—but because Liam had protected me since we were teenagers running away from foster homes in Ohio. He knew I had changed my name, knew I was hiding, knew that walking into Alessandro’s orbit was like jumping willingly into an industrial shredder.

And now, I was carrying a Vitali heir.

In the mafia, blood was currency. A child was an anchor, a weapon, a liability, or a hostage. If Alessandro Vitali ever found out I was pregnant with his child, he wouldn't offer health insurance or a nursery. He would lock me inside a golden cage with armed guards at every door, sealing my fate forever.

I had to leave Chicago. Today.

I pushed myself up, dizzy and nauseous, and began dragging plastic trash bags from beneath the sink. I needed to pack my nursing books, my birth certificate—the fake one I had bought in Detroit two years ago—and whatever cash I had hidden in the flour canister.

I reached for the small bathroom wastebasket to empty the cardboard packaging from the test into the bottom, burying it deep beneath used cotton pads and old wrappers.

A shadow fell across the hallway light filtering through the bathroom door.

The apartment deadbolt clicked.

My breath caught in my throat. Liam had forgotten his lunchbox. He was coming back.

“Liam?” I whispered, standing up with the trash bag clutched in my fist.

The front door swung open. But the footsteps that crossed the threshold didn't sound like Liam’s heavy, familiar stride. They were too quiet. Too measured. Multiple sets of boots pacing out the perimeter of our tiny living room with military precision.

My blood ran cold.

A heavy knock rattled the bathroom door.

“Emma,” a deep, gravelly voice murmured from the other side of the wood—a voice that had haunted my nightmares and my secret daydreams for six long weeks.