The most feared Mafia boss in Chicago spent eight months hunting me because he believed I had betrayed him. When Gabriel Russo finally kicked down my apartment door, he came with a loaded gun and one intention—to kill me. Then he saw the scar carved across my pregnant stomach, dropped his weapon, and demanded, “Who did this to you?” I looked at the man I once loved and whispered the words that destroyed everything he believed: “You gave them the order.”
My name is Clara Hayes.
For eight months, I had hidden in a crumbling apartment in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
Then one rainy night, my door exploded inward.
Gabriel stood there.
Charcoal coat.
Cold eyes.
Gun pointed directly at me.
His lieutenant, Daniel Shaw, waited in the hallway.
Gabriel stepped closer.
“Whose baby is it?”
My hand instinctively covered my stomach.
“Gabriel—”
“Is it Connor Bell’s?”
The accusation cut deeper than I expected.
“How can you even ask me that?”
He reached toward me.
I twisted away.
“Don’t touch me. Please… it still hurts.”
Gabriel froze.
“What hurts?”
I said nothing.
He caught the bottom of my oversized sweater and slowly lifted it.
Then all the rage disappeared from his face.
A long, jagged scar ran beneath my ribs toward my swollen belly.
It wasn’t a surgical scar.
Someone had tried to cut me open.
Gabriel’s gun hit the floor.
“Who did this?”
I stared at him.
“You did.”
His face went white.
Two years earlier, I had been a trauma nurse at St. Catherine when Gabriel entered my ER bleeding from an ambush.
His armed men crowded my treatment room.
“Everyone outside,” I ordered.
Nobody moved.
“I said outside.”
Gabriel opened his eyes.
“You’re not afraid of me?”
“I’m more worried about you bleeding on my floor.”
He laughed.
Weeks later, he returned just to see me.
Flowers became dinners.
Dinners became nights together.
For one year, I saw the man beneath the reputation.
Then everything collapsed.
One of Gabriel’s warehouses was attacked.
Three men died.
Confidential records disappeared.
Millions vanished.
And so did I.
My hospital ID was discovered beside stolen shipping routes. Surveillance showed a woman resembling me entering Connor Bell’s vehicle. Phone records linked me to his organization.
Every piece of evidence screamed one thing:
Traitor.
Gabriel believed it.
Now, eight months later, he stood inside my apartment staring at the proof that something had been done to me.
“I never betrayed you,” I said.
“Then explain everything.”
My eyes moved toward Daniel in the hallway.
He was no longer watching me.
He was watching Gabriel’s gun on the floor.
And suddenly I understood.
I grabbed Gabriel’s wrist.
“Don’t turn around.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because the man who fabricated the evidence against me is standing right behind you.”
Daniel’s hand slowly disappeared beneath his coat.
And Gabriel finally realized the traitor he had hunted for eight months had never been me.
PART 2: “Don’t turn around.”
My fingers tightened around Gabriel’s wrist.
For one suspended second, neither of us breathed.
Daniel stood behind him in the narrow hallway, his face half-shadowed by the weak light above the stairwell. His hand remained beneath his coat.
Gabriel’s eyes stayed on mine.
“What is he holding?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth. My pulse beat painfully in my throat.
Daniel gave a tired laugh. “Still protecting him, Clara?”
“I’m trying to keep you from making this worse.”
“You already made it worse eight months ago.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened. “Daniel.”
The single word carried the weight of years between them. Loyalty. Trust. The kind of history that made betrayal harder to accept because it had once seemed impossible.
Để lại một phản hồi