Chapter 19
“What does it feel like,” I said softly, “to watch me rise again and fall perfectly in your twin brother’s arms? You played pretend. But I perfected it.”
His face contorted.
“What?”
Jeremiah peeled his mask off slowly and stepped beside me. His voice was a blade.
“I’m the real Jeremiah,” he said coldly. “Your long–lost brother. The one Father erased. And Aria i: no longer yours. She’s mine now.”
Then the lights cut.
3
The ballroom exploded into screams as electricity cracked and smoke spread like fog.
But I didn’t flinch.
I turned toward Jeremiah in the dark and whispered, “Let the empire burn, one piece at a time.”
And somewhere behind us, I could still hear Harvick’s voice was raw and guttural, screaming my name into the smoke like a man realizing he lost something he never really deserved to begin
with.
ELODIE’S POV
I ran out of that cursed gala like fire was chasing me.
My heels clicked too loud and my gown clung to my skin like it was trying to choke me. I could hear them… cameras snapping, people gasping, the press whispering behind their damned
enses.
‘Pregnant wife left behind.”
‘Isn’t that Jeremiah’s woman?”
‘Did Harvick just bid on a ghost?”
wanted to scream. I wanted to claw their eyes out and rip their tongues off. I just kept running.
Outside, the air felt like knives. Lara caught up to me, grabbing my arm like she always did when
she wanted to make it look like she cared.
‘Elodie, calm down,” she hissed, dragging me to the car as paparazzi closed in. “You’re pregnant, for God’s sake. You need to protect the baby.”
yanked my arm away, slamming myself into the seat, panting like a wounded animal.
‘He bid on her, mother,” I snapped, my voice cracking. “He bid on her like I didn’t exist. Like I’m nothing!”
Lara slid in beside me and fixed her jacket like she was trying to adjust the shame off her spine.
“You’re the wife,” she said coldly. “The one carrying the Ferrante heir. Danica was just a phase. A plaything.”
“She’s dead,” I said through gritted teeth, holding my belly. “She died. I watched him bury her. Why the fuck is she alive?!”
4:51 pm
Then Lara’s secretary called. She answered on speaker without even thinking, too pissed to care. And then the voice came through: calm, hesitant, shaking with fear.
འ ཇ .
“Ma’am… it’s confirmed. Aria Velenza… and Danica Monroe… they’re the same person.”
Silence.
I blinked. Lara turned white. My throat locked.
“No,” I said quietly. “No, she’s not. She died. I saw the funeral. She’s… she’s gone.”
“Not anymore,” the voice replied. “The auction exposed her face. Everyone in the black circles is talking. She’s alive. And she’s… thriving.”
Lara hung up and just sat there, stunned.
But me? I ran.
I locked myself in the guest wing, tore off my heels, ripped off my necklace, and screamed into a pillow until my voice cracked. I trashed the vanity. I threw my perfume against the mirror anc watched it shatter like my dignity.
I ripped open my old clippings of Danica. She used to be on every cover. The “Fiancée of Ferrante.” The “Beloved Beauty of the Mafia Elite.”
Lies. Every headline was a lie.
I grabbed the scissors from the drawer and started cutting her face out of every page. Over and over. Her smile. Her eyes. Her fucking lips.
Slice. Slice. Slice.
‘How is she still winning?” I whispered to myself, tears streaming, breath shaking. “How is she alive? Why is she still taking everything I own?”
collapsed onto the floor with paper pieces around me like a graveyard.
‘If I can’t erase her,” I whispered, holding a cutout of her smiling face, “then I’ll destroy her. She aked her death once… fine. Now I’ll make it real.”
And I pressed the blade to my palm, not to hurt myself–no. Just to feel the edge. Just to
emember that I still had power.
Danica might’ve become Aria.
But I? I was done playing innocent. Next time we meet, it won’t be a catfight.
t’ll be a war.
Next morning I visited the private clinic I always trusted. The one that knew how to lie with elegance.
I wore the softest beige dress I owned, no makeup, and tied my hair in a low, loose braid that made me look delicate and tired. The nurse barely asked questions. She just nodded when I said, “I think I’m bleeding again. Please help me… don’t tell my husband. He’s stressed.” Lara came rushing after, her heels echoing down the corridor like a bad omen. She pulled me into her arms like I was her own daughter and whispered, “Don’t worry, Elodie. You’re the mother
Chapter 19
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4:52 pm D
of this family’s heir. We will protect you.”
I smiled against her shoulder.
In private, after they ran the “tests,” I called my guy.
“I need another sonogram,” I whispered, pacing the edge of the bathroom. “Make it look like eight weeks, heart strong. And send it by tonight.”
He groaned on the other line, annoyed, but I didn’t care. I wired twice the usual. Loyalty isn’t free
anymore.
After the appointment, I went home and took two micro doses of ipecac. Enough to make me dizzy, not enough to damage the baby. Not that there ever was one.
I curled up in bed, shivering and holding my stomach like I was fighting death. The doctor’s papers beside me. The fake bloodied sheets placed where Lara would find them.
I smiled through the pain. “A little suffering is nothing,” I whispered, “if it keeps Harvick mine.”
But by nightfall… he didn’t come home.
I waited in the hallway. Sat in the living room like a desperate wife in an old novel. I stared at the front door with my bare feet touching the cold floor.
Still. No car. No footsteps. No scent of his cologne.
Lara came to my room, fussing over me with blankets and tea. I thanked her like a good girl. I played the part. But my chest felt like it was collapsing.
He knew.
He knew something.
He wasn’t stupid. He was dangerous. And I was starting to feel like the fool.
So I switched plans.
4:52 pm
