"My mob boss husband brought his mistress into our bedroom while I was 8 months pregnant—unaware I’d already planned my escape."

The heavy oak hotel door swung open wide, exposing the small, sterile room to the two most powerful men in the Midwest underworld.

I stumbled back two steps, my hand clutching my belly as my baby kicked hard against my ribs. "Don't touch me!"

Dante stepped across the threshold, shutting the door firmly behind him, locking Marco out in the corridor. He didn't rush toward me. He moved with slow, fluid grace, removing his wet wool coat, tossing it onto the small desk chair, unbuttoning his tuxedo cuffs, rolling his sleeves back to his forearms.

His eyes never left my face.

"You're going home, Elena," Dante commanded softly, stepping up to where I stood beside the bed.

"I am not going back to that house, Dante!" I yelled, tears finally spilling over my lashes, cutting clean tracks through the exhaustion on my cheeks. "I hate that house! I hate the walls, I hate the bedroom, and I hate looking at you!"

Dante stopped six inches from me. He didn't reach for my arm. He didn't use physical force. He simply stood towering over my five-foot-four frame, his massive six-foot-three body casting an absolute, impenetrable shadow over the room.

"You don't hate me, Elena," Dante murmured, his broad hand coming up, hovering half an inch above my cheek, refusing to touch my skin without my consent. "You are furious with me. You have every right to burn my city to the ground. But you are not staying in a sixty-dollar-a-night hotel room while you are eight months pregnant with the Moretti heir."

"It isn't your house anymore," I whispered, my voice breaking into pathetic fragments. "It's a prison."

Dante looked down at my face, a dark, agonizing look of realization passing across his handsome features.

"Then I will build you a new one," Dante promised softly. "I will sell the estate in Gold Coast by morning. I will move us to the private island in Lake Michigan. I will fire every servant who looked at Vivian Cross. But tonight... you come home where my medical team can monitor your blood pressure."

He reached down, his broad, calloused hands carefully, reverently sliding beneath my knees and around my back, lifting my heavy, pregnant frame off the floor with effortless strength.

"Put me down!" I gasped, my hands instinctively clutching his dark shirt collar.

"No," Dante rumbled against my hair, carrying me out into the corridor past Marco and four armed guards standing at attention. "You ran for four months, Elena. The chase is over."

Twenty minutes later, the black Maybach glided through the iron security gates of the Gold Coast Estate.

The mansion was dark, silent, and purged.

Every trace of Vivian Cross—her smudged glass, her jacket, her perfume—had been scrubbed from the master suite by a team of six servants who now stood in the foyer with bowed heads, terrified for their lives.

Dante carried me up the grand marble staircase, past the empty nursery, straight into the guest wing on the third floor—a wing I had redecorated two years ago with soft linen curtains, warm oak furniture, and a sunlit balcony.

He gently set me down on the plush king-sized bed, unlacing my damp boots himself, taking them off my swollen feet with astonishing gentleness.

"The obstetrician, Dr. Aris, is waiting downstairs," Dante said, standing up, buttoning his collar. "She will run a full fetal heart monitor check to make sure the stress didn't trigger early contractions."

I lay back against the pillows, my face pale, my hazel eyes staring at him with cold, unbroken defiance.

"You can lock the doors, Dante," I whispered, my voice flat as winter ice. "You can put twenty guards outside my room. But the moment this baby is born... I am leaving you. And no amount of guns or money will stop me."