Chapter 4 - GHOSTS IN THE RAIN
We fled through the servant’s corridors, a labyrinth of narrow hallways I knew by heart from my endless shifts cleaning the estate. Lorenzo took point, moving like a shadow, dispatching two more of Dante’s armed guards with ruthless efficiency before we made it to the underground garage. We stole a non-descript SUV, bursting through the reinforced gate just as Dante’s reinforcements arrived.
The drive was a blur of torrential rain and screeching tires. I sat in the backseat, my uniform stained with Lorenzo’s blood and my own sweat, nursing Leo until he finally, miraculously, fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. It was the first time I had seen the baby look comfortable since I started working at the estate.
Lorenzo drove for two hours into the mountains, finally pulling up to a desolate, hidden cabin deep in the woods. Once inside, the adrenaline wore off, leaving only exhaustion and grief. Lorenzo locked the heavy steel doors and turned to me. He looked at Leo, asleep against my chest, and a single tear traced a line through the blood on his cheek.
"My wife died giving birth to him," Lorenzo whispered, his voice cracking. The ruthless Don was gone. "He was all I had left of her. When he stopped eating... when the doctors said his organs were failing... I thought it was a curse. God punishing me for my sins."
"It wasn't God," I said softly, adjusting my ruined uniform to cover myself. "It was the devil in your own home."
I told him everything then. About Lily. About the stairs. About Damon’s gambling debts and the monsters that came looking for him. I told him how my body had made milk for a baby who was already in heaven, and how it felt like acid burning in my veins until I held Leo.
May you like
Lorenzo sat beside me on the dusty sofa, closing the distance between us. He reached out, his large, calloused hand gently brushing a stray curl away from Leo’s sleeping face. "He took your child," Lorenzo vowed, his eyes burning with an inferno of vengeance. "I swear on my wife’s soul, Maya, Damon will beg for death before I grant it to him."
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