Chapter Six: The Physician's Price

Isabella woke at seven to the smell of coffee she wasn't allowed to drink. Two floors below, she heard Lorenzo and Marcus Whitfield talking. She lay still, staring at the ceiling of a guest room that was larger than her own apartment. She knew the man downstairs was likely the reason her child's father had lived a lie for twenty-four years.

She dressed quickly in clothes someone had left for her. They were soft, high-quality, and fit her perfectly. It was a small, unsettling reminder of how quickly Lorenzo’s people had absorbed her into their world.

She found Lorenzo alone in the kitchen. Whitfield was gone. Lorenzo looked tense, like a man barely holding back his temper.

"He's on his way to the clinic," Lorenzo said. "Same as every Tuesday for twenty years. I told him nothing had changed."

"Has it?" Isabella asked.

"Everything has," Lorenzo replied. He looked exhausted in the daylight. "My people checked his banking records. Twenty-four years ago, three months before he gave me my diagnosis, Marcus Whitfield received a wire transfer of $400,000 from a Cayman Islands account. That account was opened for one payment and then vanished."

Isabella sat down. She struggled to reconcile the polite man she'd met before with a doctor cold enough to fake fertility results for money. "So he took the bribe?"

"He did," Lorenzo confirmed. "Either he lied for a f*e, or someone had enough leverage over him to make $400,000 f*el like the safer option. I need to find out which it was. That determines if he is a man I can still use, or a man I have to remove."

"How will you find out?"

"Carefully." Lorenzo poured her a cup of decaf. "Marcus thinks I still trust him. I'll let him believe that while my people trace the money. Someone opened that account, and someone closed it. Both are traceable if you have the right people."

"And if it leads back to someone in your world?"

"Then I'll have both of them," Lorenzo said calmly. "The man who lied and the man who paid for it. They need to learn the cost of trying to erase a De Luca before birth."

Isabella felt a wave of nausea. It wasn't morning sickness; it was the terrifying ease with which Lorenzo spoke. He wasn't cruel—he had been gentle with her coffee—but he was decisive and dangerous once a line was crossed.

"I want to be there," she said. "When you confront him or find out who is behind this. I don't want to be kept safely upstairs while you handle it."

"Isabella—"

"You said you wouldn't keep me in the dark anymore," she insisted. "This is my child, too. Whatever happens to him happens to us both."

Lorenzo looked surprised, then respectful. He was a man used to ruling alone, and he was still learning what a partner looked like.

"You know what you're asking," he warned. "If Marcus is working for someone in my organization, being by my side makes you a target."

"I understand. Hiding upstairs doesn't make me safer; it just makes me easier to surprise."

Lorenzo stayed quiet. He was fighting twenty-five years of instinct that told him to hide the people he loved from danger.

"All right," he finally agreed. "You'll be there. You'll be protected—that is non-negotiable—but you won't be hidden. It's the most I've ever offered anyone."

"It's enough," she said.

He kissed the top of her head—a brief, awkward gesture. "There's something else," he whispered. "Security flagged a car circling the block twice in the last forty minutes. It's not a mistake; it's reconnaissance."

Isabella’s stomach dropped. "They found the house?"

"Or they're looking for it," Lorenzo said. His voice shifted from a lover to a general. "Whoever is behind this isn't waiting. They're already here, and I intend to find out if Marcus Whitfield is the reason they know where to look."

Outside, the wind shifted. Down the block, a strange car began its second slow, deliberate pass.