Início / Mafia / Contracted to My Fiance’s Mafia Don / Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

Todos os capítulos de Contracted to My Fiance’s Mafia Don: Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

231 Capítulos

71

ElaraPeace had somehow existed in the house for six months, and I had allowed myself to believe it might stay.Nothing about our lives had actually become simple. Alexander still carried the weight of rebuilding what The Sanctum had cost him. Michael grew a little more every single day, testing the limits of what a one-year-old could reach, climb, or destroy in the span of an afternoon. Vivian moved in and out of our home with the same quiet reliability she always had, appearing exactly when I needed her and disappearing before I had the chance to thank her properly. Still, underneath all of it, there was a steadiness that had not existed before. I had stopped waking up braced for disaster.That ended on a Tuesday afternoon.I was in the kitchen with Michael, who had recently discovered that oatmeal made an excellent medium for artistic expression across his high chair tray, his bib, and most of his own face. I wiped a smear from his cheek, and he laughed at me, delighted with himsel

72

Elara Alexander was in his study when I found him, the door half open, his voice carrying the low, measured tone he used for business calls that required careful handling. He had his back to me and hadn't heard me come in, so I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than I needed to, watching him the way I might watch a stranger. I thought about the months we had built together since The Sanctum, the mornings and evenings that had felt like proof we were finally safe, and every time he had told me he loved me and meant it enough that I never questioned it. Standing there with Vivian's phone still fresh in my memory, I found myself wondering, for the first time since I had known him, how much of what he'd told me had actually been the whole truth. He ended the call and turned around, and whatever he saw on my face told him immediately that something was wrong. "Elara. I didn't hear you come in." "Who is Elena?" The color left his face so completely that for a moment I though

73

Alexander Elena Moretti had been a ghost to me for twenty years, one I had spent every one of those years trying to forget. I had convinced myself, in the way people convince themselves of things they need to believe to keep functioning, that she was better off without me in her life. Standing outside the hotel where Vivian's contact had told me she was staying, I understood for the first time how wrong that conviction had been, and how long a person can carry a lie before it finally comes looking for them. I found her in the lobby, seated in a chair near the window, dressed simply in a way that suggested she had never needed the excess I had built my life around. Her dark hair carried streaks of grey she hadn't had the last time I saw her, and there was a tiredness in her posture that told me more about the years than any explanation could have. But when she looked up, and our eyes met, I recognized her instantly. Some things remained unchanged, no matter how much time passed

74

Elara Alexander told me everything, and he did not try to soften a single part of it. He spoke about the marriage he had entered too young to understand what it required of him, the years he and Elena had spent together before everything between them collapsed, and the promises he had made and broken without ever looking back to see what he had left behind. He described walking away from her without warning, and the way he had spent two decades afterward pretending she had never existed at all, as though erasing her from his own memory could erase what he had done to her. I listened without interrupting him, letting him say all of it in his own time, because I understood that a confession like this one needed room to breathe if it was going to mean anything at all. When he finally finished, I asked the only question that mattered to me. "Why didn't you tell me any of this before now?" "Because I was ashamed," he said. "Ashamed of her?" "Ashamed of myself. Of what I did to he

75

Alexander I drove to the hospital alone that afternoon. Elara had wanted to come with me. She had already reached for her coat before I stopped her, telling her that Michael needed her at home and that this was something I had to face on my own terms. I told her I would be back before she had time to worry about how long I'd been gone. Both of those things were true in a technical sense, but underneath them was a lie I hadn't fully admitted to myself yet, the sense that I needed to see Elena without an audience before I could figure out how to tell Elara the rest of it. Elena was in a private room when I arrived, her face marked with bruising along one cheekbone, her arm secured in a sling, her eyes swollen enough that I could see the effort it took her to keep them open. She looked like someone who had survived something violent and hadn't yet found the space to process what it had cost her. "Alexander," she said. "You came." "Of course I came." "I wasn't sure you would."

76

Elara I trusted Alexander. I told myself that constantly throughout the following morning, repeating it until the words started to feel less like a conviction and more like something I was trying to convince myself of. Somewhere underneath that trust, though, a small and persistent part of me kept circling back to the same question, wondering what else might still be buried in the years he had spent hiding an entire marriage from everyone who loved him. I decided I needed to see Elena myself. She was still in the hospital when I arrived, the bruising along her cheekbone still visible, her exhaustion evident in the way she held herself even while lying in bed. She looked genuinely surprised when I walked through her door, as though she hadn't expected me to actually follow through on the possibility. "Elara," she said. "Alexander mentioned you might come see me." "I had to," I said. "I couldn't leave things where they were." "Please, sit down." I took the chair beside her be

77

Alexander She came home just as she promised she would. I had spent the time waiting for her in the study, staring at the same section of wall for what felt like an hour, trying to figure out how a man could possibly make right the kind of damage I had spent twenty years building. I ran from my past for so long that I had almost convinced myself it would never actually catch up with me, and now it had arrived at my doorstep in the form of a woman I had once promised to love and had abandoned instead. "Alexander." I turned toward her voice and found Elara standing in the doorway, her expression calmer than I had any right to expect given everything the last two days had revealed about me. Her eyes held a steadiness that told me she had come here with a purpose rather than an accusation. "We need to talk," she said. "About what, specifically?" "About Elena. About your past. About everything you still haven't told me, even after promising me there was nothing left." I stood fro

78

Elara The weeks that followed settled into something quieter than anything we had experienced since David first walked into our lives with his blackmail and his carefully hidden rage. Alexander and I began talking more honestly than we ever had before, working through his past in pieces, discussing his fears and the decisions he had made when he was young enough to believe that running away solved more problems than it created. I made a point of listening without judgment, without pulling away from him, because I understood that a man like Alexander needed proof that honesty wouldn't cost him the one relationship he had finally allowed himself to trust completely. He told me everything eventually. The full history of his marriage to Elena, the years they had shared before everything fell apart, and the specific way he had walked out of her life without giving her the decency of an explanation. Listening to him lay it all out, I began to understand something he clearly hadn't r

79

AlexanderElara showed me the message the moment I walked through the front door that evening, holding her phone out to me with an expression that mixed fear and determination in equal measure. I took it from her and read the words twice, trying to make sense of a threat that referenced David and Elena with a familiarity that suggested whoever sent it knew far more about our lives than any stranger should."Who is this?" she asked, watching my face for any sign of recognition."I don't know," I said, handing the phone back to her."Alexander, if you know something and you're protecting me from it—""I don't know who sent this, Elara. I'm telling you the truth, and I understand why you'd want to question that after everything the last few weeks have revealed about me."She studied me for a long moment, and something in her expression softened slightly. "I believe you.""I need to find out who is doing this before they decide to hurt anyone else the way they hurt Elena," I said. "This i

80

ElaraI refused to hide.I continued going to work, taking Michael to the park in the afternoons, and living my life the way I had always wanted to, without constant fear governing every decision I made. I had promised myself, somewhere in the middle of everything we had survived together, that I would never again allow another person's threats to shrink the space I occupied in my own life.Still, I was careful about it. Vivian accompanied me nearly everywhere I went, and I found myself constantly checking my surroundings in a way that had become second nature after everything with David and The Sanctum. I avoided unnecessary risks without letting that caution turn into the kind of paralysis that had once defined so much of my existence.I wasn't going to become a victim again. Not this time, and not ever.The next message arrived on a Thursday afternoon, and it was different from everything that had come before it. Instead of text, it was a video, and when I opened it, my stomach dro

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