All Chapters of THE DON'S DAUGHTER: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Elise's POVNico didn't ask until we were ten minutes out from the estate.He had been watching me from the corner of his eye since I got in — not obviously, just the way he watched everything, peripherally, constantly — and I had been staring out the window at the city moving past and not talking because I needed the ten minutes to put everything back in its place before I walked back into the estate and had to be La Signora again."What did he give you?" Nico asked.I told him.Not just the message. All of it — the translation, the Reeds connection, and the thing Adrian had said about the night I got pregnant. I hadn't planned to tell him that last part. It came out because I was tired and the car was moving and Nico was the person I had been telling things to lately without entirely deciding to.He was quiet for a long moment after I finished.Then — "Jade engineered the pregnancy.""Possibly," I said. "I can't prove it.""But you believe it."I looked at the window. "I believe she

Elise's POVI was up at four without an alarm. I lay there for exactly three minutes staring at the ceiling and then I got up because lying there was worse than moving. My body knew something was happening today before my mind had fully caught up with it — that specific hum underneath everything, the kind that used to frighten me when I was younger until my father told me it wasn't fear, it was readiness, and the difference mattered.I showered. I dressed carefully — dark trousers, a black blouse, my mother's ring on my right hand. No other jewelry. I looked at myself in the mirror for a moment and I thought about the woman who had stood in a hospital car park with torn stitches and bleeding hands and said both of you will regret this.Today was the day I made good on that.I went downstairs.Nico was already in the kitchen. Of course he was. He had coffee going and two cups on the counter and he looked at me when I came in with the specific attention of someone who had also been awak

Elise's POVWe got back to the estate at half past twelve.My father was in the study. He had not moved from that room since Marco was taken out of the war room that morning — I had expected him to, had expected him to find something to do with his hands the way he always did when he was processing something difficult, but when I came through the study door he was just sitting there in the armchair with a glass of whisky he had not drunk and the afternoon light coming in grey through the windows.He looked up."Jade?" he said."Done," I said. "She'll leave. She has nowhere left to go — her father is finished, the Albero network is cut, Don Savio won't touch her now. She'll go." I sat down across from him. "She might rebuild eventually, somewhere. That's a problem for later."He nodded."That leaves Rafael," I said.My father picked up his glass. Set it down again without drinking. He had been doing that for hours probably — picking it up, putting it back, not quite ready for it."What

Adrian's POVCain told me it was over on a Friday afternoon.He called from outside — I could hear the street behind him, traffic and wind — and he said it's done, Elise closed everything this morning and I sat in my hotel room with the phone pressed to my ear and felt something I hadn't been able to identify at the time and only understood later was relief. Not because I had won anything. I hadn't won anything. But because the waiting was done, the thing that had been building for weeks had finally landed somewhere, and I could stop bracing for impact."Jade?" I said."Gone," Cain said. "Or going. Elise told her to leave and she's not the kind of woman who needs to be told twice when there's nothing left to stay for."I thought about Jade in the apartment. Her suitcase in my bedroom. Her things rearranged on the bathroom shelf. Two years of small reorganizations that I had watched happen and called them something other than what they were because the alternative had required me to lo

Elise's POVCain came on Sunday.He texted first, which I appreciated. Not much notice. Just: Can I come by this afternoon? Nothing urgent. Just want to see the place. I had texted back yes and not thought too much about what it meant that he wanted to see it, and then he arrived at three with a bottle of something expensive and the particular ease of a man who was not trying to make an impression.I took him through the main entrance and he looked at the portrait of my grandfather in the hall and then at the high ceilings and the old furniture and the general weight of the place and he said, "It's not what I expected.""What did you expect?" I asked."I don't know. Something more. ""Imposing?""Intimidating," he said. "It's just a house.""It's just a house," I agreed. Which was not entirely true. But it was the thing I had needed to remember about it when I first came back. A house with history in it, not a fortress. The difference mattered.I took him to the sitting room and someo