Free Web NovelChapter 150: Chapter 150
REINA
The blood drained from my face.
They knew each other. Of course they knew each other. Domenico Gravano knew everyone. Controlled everything. I had called the one person whose history was already tangled in his, and I hadn’t even known. No wonder my aunt never really liked him.
"That has nothing to do with—"
"She hates me," he continued pleasantly, as if we were discussing the weather. "Genuinely, passionately hates me. Which is her right, of course. Grief makes people irrational." He reached out and very gently, very slowly, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I was too frozen to flinch away. "I wonder what she would think if she knew her beloved niece was carrying my child while married to my son.."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"She’d be devastated, I imagine," he continued, his voice dropping lower, softer, almost tender. "Heartbroken. All that hatred she’s carried for me redirected straight at you. For involving yourself with me.. Her good girl." He searched my face with those dark, knowing eyes. "Should I call her back, Reina? Should I tell her why you won’t be coming after all?"
My mouth had gone completely dry.
"You wouldn’t," I whispered.
His smile didn’t waver. It wasn’t cruel. That was the most terrifying thing about it — it wasn’t cruel at all. It was patient. Certain. The smile of a man who had already won and was simply waiting for me to realize it.
"Go back inside," he said quietly. "Change into the dress. Come with me tonight."
The box was still in his hand, offered toward me like a perfectly wrapped ultimatum.
My phone buzzed again. Aunt Miriam, calling back. I stared at it. At him. At the box.
The city moved around us, indifferent and loud, while my entire world shrank to the space between his eyes and mine.
Slowly, with hands that didn’t feel like my own, I reached out and took the box.
Domenico said nothing. He didn’t need to. He simply placed his hand at the small of my back and guided me toward the door, and I let him, because what choice did I have left?
He had just closed every single door.
I had told myself I knew Domenico Gravano.
I had told myself that despite everything — despite the manipulation, the obsession, the way he looked at me like I was something he’d already decided to keep — I understood him. That beneath the danger there was something almost human. Something that cared for me in its own twisted, consuming way.
Standing in front of the mirror in a dress I hadn’t chosen, in a room I hadn’t wanted to enter, with him sitting crossed-legged on the bed behind me watching my every movement with that quiet, satisfied expression — I realized I had been catastrophically wrong.
I didn’t know this man at all.
The dress he’d chosen was deep burgundy, fitted, expensive. It skimmed every curve with an intimacy that felt deliberate. Intentional. Like he’d selected it knowing exactly how it would sit against the new fullness of my body. I kept my eyes on my own reflection and tried to make my hands stop trembling as I smoothed the fabric at my waist. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
"You look extraordinary," he said from behind me. Low. Unhurried. "Even more than I anticipated." freewebnoveℓ.com
I said nothing.
"The color suits you." A pause. "Everything suits you lately. Have you noticed that? The way you’re changing?" His voice dropped into something almost reverent. "You’re becoming something else entirely, Reina. Something more. Fuller. More luminous. It’s because of what’s growing inside you."
My stomach turned violently.
"Don’t," I said quietly.
"Don’t what?" He rose from the bed with that fluid, unhurried grace that had once struck me as magnetic and now struck me as predatory. He appeared in the mirror behind me, tall and immaculate in his dark suit, eyes tracking over me with slow, deliberate possession. "Don’t speak the truth? Don’t acknowledge what’s happening?"
"I’m not doing this right now."
"We should get married."
The words landed in the quiet of the room like something detonating.
I turned around slowly. He was watching me with complete seriousness. No smirk. No performative amusement. Just those dark eyes, steady and certain, like he’d been sitting with this thought for a long time and had simply decided now was the moment to release it.
"What?" My voice barely made sound.
"Married." He said it again, simply, like it was obvious. Like it was inevitable. "You’re carrying my child, Reina. My third child. It makes sense. Become my wife. Let me take care of you both properly. No more hiding. No more Paolo. No more of this exhausting back and forth."
The room felt like it was tilting.
"You’re insane," I whispered.
Something moved across his expression. Not hurt. Not quite. "Is it so unreasonable? I have wealth. Protection. I can give this child everything. I can give you everything."
"I have a husband."
"You have a man who vomited on you on your anniversary and disappeared." His voice remained gentle. Conversational. Which somehow made it worse. "A man who hasn’t answered a single one of your calls. A man who has never once touched you the way you deserve to be touched." His eyes moved over me slowly. "Is that really what you want to protect?"
"Don’t you dare talk about Paolo like—"
"Or," he continued, tilting his head slightly, "if marriage feels too formal for your sensibilities — you could simply stay. Here. With me. The way things have been." A small, almost lazy smile. "My third baby mama, as the young people say. I’d take care of you all the same. You and the child both. You’d want for nothing."
The words hit me somewhere visceral and ugly. Third baby mama. Said so casually. So carelessly. Like I was simply a slot to fill. A function to serve.
"I’m not going to be either of those things." My voice shook but I held his gaze. "I’m not going to marry you and I’m not going to be your— I’m not your anything, Domenico. This baby is a mistake. This whole thing has been a mistake and I need you to let me leave."
