Chapter 6
Two heartbeats.
One mine. One incredibly small and alive.
Rossi stared at the monitor, stunned. “You’re pregnant.”
The words hit like a bullet.
“No,” I breathed. “That can’t be”
“It can,” he said softly. “You didn’t know?”
My eyes blurred with tears. “No. I thought the pain was from stress… from running.”
Rossi’s voice dropped, almost a whisper. “It’s his, isn’t it?”
I nodded, the truth killing me. “Lorenzo.”
The name tasted like salt and blood.
Rossi’s jaw tightened. “The bastard marked another woman while you carried his child.”
“Don’t,” I said hoarsely. “Don’t talk about him.”
“He doesn’t deserve to live in your head.”
“He already lives in my blood,” I said, voice breaking.
Rossi looked away, his face blank. “Then we’ll make sure he never touches you or that child again."
I turned my face toward the wall, tears slipping quietly down. “You don’t understand. He won’t stop until I’m gone. He thinks I’m a liar. A thief.”
Rossi’s tone hardened. “Then we’ll make him regret believing that.”
Hours passed. The rain softened. I sat on the clinic bed, looking at the faint picture of the baby that changed everything.
I was no longer just a broken Luna. I was a mother.
And if the world wanted to call me a fraud then I would become something far more dangerous.
I was done lying.
But just as resolve began to build inside me, Rossi’s phone buzzed. He frowned and answered, his tone sharp.
“What?” A pause. His jaw went stiff. “Say that again.”
My heart stills. “What is it?”
He hung up slowly. “They know you’re here.”
The blood drained from my face. “How?”
He looked toward the door, eyes dark as sin. “Because someone in this city just sold your location to the DeLuca pack.”
The lights flickered again, thunder cracking in the background.
I pressed a shaking hand to my stomach. “Then we run.”
Rossi’s eyes burned with a dangerous calm. “No, sweetheart. We fight.”
Outside, headlights cut through the rain-soaked night black SUVs moving toward the clinic like hungry dogs. And as the first engine roared closer, I whispered to my unborn child, “You were born of betrayal, little one but you’ll rise in blood.”
Success has a strange sound, it doesn’t scream; it hums softly under your skin, saying, You made it. But no amount of glitter can quiet the ghosts of the past.
Three years.
That’s how long it took for me to stop shaking every time I heard the name DeLuca. Three years to bury the scared girl who ran through tunnels and replace her with someone new. Someone powerful.
Someone untouchable.
The flashing lights from the press outside my shop glittered through the glass walls as I stood before the mirror, fixing the diamond pin on my jacket. The woman looking back at me was a stranger's hair pulled into a perfect bun, blood-red lipstick, shoes sharp enough to kill.
“Miss Vale,” my helper called softly from the door. “The investors are waiting.”
Miss Vale. The name rolled off her tongue like silk. A name I’d picked carefully Aria Vale, creator and CEO of Moonveil Couture. The name alone made photographers talk and fashion houses tremble.
I smiled at her mirror. “Tell them I’ll be right there.”
As the door shut, I stared at the skyline beyond the glass. San Francisco sparkled under the afternoon sun, but I still felt the cold shadow of Los Angeles, the city I had fled, the pack that had destroyed me, the Alpha who had called me a fraud.
Lorenzo.
Even thinking his name was like tasting blood.
I pressed a hand to my gut reflexively, a habit I hadn’t lost even after all this time. My secret was safe. The one thing they hadn’t killed.
The meeting was routine numbers, drawings, and growth plans. I listened, nodded, and signed. But my mind was elsewhere, always halfway between the kingdom I’d built and the life I’d lost.
When the boardroom cleared, I stepped out onto the deck. The air smelled of flowers and rain. Rossi joined me moments later, his dark suit crisp, his eyes steady.
“Three years,” he said with a smile. “And you still manage to make every wolf in this city bow to you.”
I turned to him with a faint smile. “I learned from the best.”
“Flattery doesn’t suit you.”
“Neither does mercy,” I said quietly.
He laughed, but there was pride in his eyes. “You’ve come a long way from the girl bleeding in a clinic.”
“That girl died,” I answered. “She had to.”
“Still,” he said, giving me a glass of wine, “you built something extraordinary. Moonveil isn’t just a brand, it’s a throne.”
I took a sip, enjoying the sharp taste. “And thrones always come with enemies.”
He studied me for a moment, his voice low. “You’ve been watching the DeLucas again, haven’t you?”
My hand tightened on the glass. “I don’t watch. I study. There’s a difference.”
“You mean him.”
I didn’t answer.
Rossi sighed. “You can’t keep living like this, Aria. Revenge doesn’t fill the hole. It only feeds it.”
“Maybe,” I said, setting the glass down. “But it keeps me alive.”
Later that night, after the building cleared and quiet fell over the penthouse office, I pulled out the old photograph, the one with two babies in the hospital. I traced my fingers over the edges, the faint handwriting of my mother’s name.
Aurora’s face terrified me still, her perfect smile, her gleaming title, her hand on the man who should’ve been mine.
“They stole my birthright,” I whispered into the dark. “Now I’ll take theirs.”
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