Dominic Bellano didn’t look away from me as he answered it.

“Tell me exactly what you found.”

A man’s voice came through the speaker, too faint for me to understand every word. But I heard three things clearly.

The clinic.

My name.

And the words nine weeks pregnant.

My knees nearly buckled.

Dominic’s expression didn’t change. Somehow, that was more frightening than if he had shouted.

“Send the report to my private phone,” he ordered. “And nobody touches the doctor until I speak to him myself.”

He ended the call.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then he placed his phone on the desk with extraordinary care.

“Penelope Hart,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “You’ve worked for me for four years. In those four years, you’ve lied to me exactly twice.”

I swallowed.

“The first time was when you told me you weren’t afraid of me.”

He took one step closer.

“The second was twenty minutes ago, when you told me you went to the bank.”

“Dominic—”

“Sit down.”

I couldn’t move.

His gaze dropped to my trembling hands.

“Please, Penny.”

That single word nearly destroyed me.

He had never called me Penny in that office before. At work, I was always Penelope. Precise. Professional. Untouchable.

Now, he sounded like a man holding himself together by force.

I sank into the chair opposite his desk.

He walked around it, opened a drawer, and removed a thin folder. Inside were several printed pages, a pH๏τograph of the clinic entrance, and a copy of a document bearing my name.

My blood turned cold.

“You had me followed?”

“No.” He paused. “I had the clinic investigated after my security chief noticed someone pH๏τographing you outside the building.”

He slid the pH๏τograph toward me.

A black SUV was parked across the street from the clinic.

I recognized it immediately.

Victor Raines’s men had used the same vehicle during the charity gala nine weeks earlier.

“They were watching me?” I whispered.

“Apparently.”

Dominic’s jaw тιԍнтened.

“The doctor you saw today isn’t the problem, Penny. Someone paid a member of his administrative staff to confirm your appointment. That information reached a man who has been trying to find a weakness in my family for six months.”

He leaned forward, resting both hands on the desk.

“And now that man knows you might be carrying something worth more to him than any shipment, warehouse, or bank account I own.”

I pressed my purse against my stomach.

“Does Victor know?”

“Not yet. If he did, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you in a room with windows.”

I stared at him, struggling to breathe.

“Then you know?”

His eyes lifted to mine.

“I know you visited an obstetric clinic. I know you paid cash. I know you asked the receptionist not to contact your emergency number.”

He stopped.

“But I don’t know why.”

The silence between us became unbearable.

I could have lied again.

I could have told him the appointment was for a friend. I could have denied everything and walked out of that office, just as I had walked out of his penthouse before sunrise.

But when I looked at him, I remembered that night.

The way he had held me as if the world outside his windows couldn’t touch us. The way he had whispered my name, not as an order, not as a demand, but as though it meant something to him.

And I remembered the tiny heartbeat I’d heard that morning.

My hand moved instinctively toward my abdomen.

Dominic followed the movement.

His face went utterly still.

“Penny,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

I tried.

“Is there a baby?”

My eyes filled with tears.

I nodded.

For the first time since I’d known him, Dominic Bellano looked completely unprepared for what life had placed in front of him.

He stepped away from the desk.

Then he turned toward the windows, his shoulders rigid beneath his white shirt.

“How far along?”

“Nine weeks and three days.”

He closed his eyes.

I watched him struggle with a thousand thoughts he would never allow another person to see.

When he finally turned back, his gaze was fixed on mine.

“Is it mine?”

The question hurt more than I expected.

“Yes.”

His lips parted slightly.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he crossed the room, stopped in front of me, and lowered himself onto one knee.

The most feared man in Chicago knelt on the carpet before his secretary.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

A sob escaped me.

“Because I know who you are.”

He flinched as if I’d struck him.

“I know what happens to people who get close to you. I know what your enemies do to the people you love. And I couldn’t bring a child into a world where someone might use them to control you.”

His expression hardened, but not at me.

“You thought you could disappear?”

“I was going to leave on Friday.”

“Where?”

“Iowa. My friend owns a bakery. I could work there. I could raise the baby somewhere quiet.”

“And you thought I’d never find you?”

“I thought you might be angry.”

He stared at me.

“Angry?”

His voice cracked on the word.

“Penny, I’ve spent nine weeks trying to understand why you walked out of my penthouse without waking me. I’ve watched you come into this building every morning and pretend that nothing happened between us. I’ve watched you turn pale at the smell of coffee and hide your hands beneath your desk whenever I entered the room.”

He swallowed hard.

“And all this time, you were carrying my child.”

I covered my face.

“I didn’t want to become another weakness for you.”

Dominic reached for my hands, but stopped before touching them.

“May I?”

I nodded.

He held them carefully, as though I were something precious he was afraid of breaking.

“You are not a weakness,” he said. “Neither is this baby.”

“Your enemies won’t see it that way.”

“No.” His eyes darkened. “They won’t.”

A sudden knock sounded at the office door.

Dominic rose instantly.

“Who is it?”

“Marco, sir. We have a situation.”

“Speak.”

“Victor Raines just made a call to three of our warehouses. He wasn’t asking about shipments.”

A pause.

“He was asking about Miss Hart.”

My blood ran cold.

Dominic looked at me.

“What exactly did he ask?”

Marco’s answer came through the door.

“He wanted to know whether the boss had recently taken an interest in protecting anyone special.”

Dominic’s face became frighteningly calm.

“Lock down the building. No one enters or leaves without authorization. Put two cars at the private entrance, and get the security team to Penny’s apartment.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Good.”

Dominic opened a concealed compartment in his desk and removed a second phone.

He made one call.

“It’s me. I need the house prepared.”

He listened.

“No visitors. No staff changes without my approval. And have the doctor on standby.”

I stood abruptly.

“I’m not going to your house.”

He ended the call.

“Penny—”

“I won’t live in a guarded mansion. I won’t have armed men following me to the bathroom. And I won’t let you decide everything about my life just because you’re the father.”

His expression shifted.

For a moment, I saw the man everyone feared.

Then I saw something else: a man who had just realized that protecting someone didn’t mean owning them.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.

I hadn’t expected that.

He continued, “You won’t be a prisoner in my home. You won’t give up your job unless you choose to. And nobody will make a medical decision for you.”

He paused.

“But I need you to understand one thing. Victor doesn’t know the truth yet, and we need to keep it that way while I find out who betrayed your privacy.”

“And if he discovers it?”

Dominic’s eyes met mine.

“Then he’ll discover that there are some things even I won’t negotiate.”

Before I could respond, his private phone vibrated.

A message appeared on the screen.

He read it once.

Then again.

All the color drained from his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

He turned the phone toward me.

The message contained a pH๏τograph of the ultrasound image I’d hidden inside my purse.

Beneath it were eleven words.

Congratulations, Dominic. I hear you’re going to be a father. Let’s discuss custody.

The message had been sent from an unknown number.

My hands began to shake.

“How did he get that picture?”

Dominic was already reaching for his phone.

“Marco! Find out who accessed the clinic records. Now!”

But another message arrived before he could make the call.

This one contained a pH๏τograph of my apartment building.

A red circle had been drawn around my bedroom window.

And beneath it, a final sentence appeared.

Midnight tomorrow. Come alone, or your secretary learns what happens when Bellano men refuse to cooperate.

I couldn’t breathe.

Dominic took the phone from my trembling hands and placed it facedown on the desk.

Then he looked directly at me.

“Listen to me carefully, Penny. You’re not going anywhere alone. Not because I own you. Not because I think you can’t protect yourself.”

He gently rested his hand over mine.

“Because someone has just declared war on our family before our child has even been born.”

I stared at him through my tears.

“And what are you going to do?”

The look in his eyes changed.

For a moment, the ruthless Chicago businessman disappeared, replaced by the man who had knelt before me only minutes earlier.

“First, I’m going to find the person who betrayed your trust.”

He glanced toward the door.

“Then I’m going to discover why Victor Raines wants custody of a child who doesn’t belong to him.”

My heart stopped.

“What do you mean, doesn’t belong to him?”

Dominic went silent.

I watched his expression carefully.

“Dominic?”

He opened the folder again, pulled out a document I’d never seen, and turned it toward me.

It was a copy of an old hospital record.

The patient’s name was Isabella Raines.

Victor’s late wife.

Below her name was a handwritten note dated eleven years earlier.

Dominic’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“Penny, there’s something about the Raines family you don’t know.”

He tapped the note.

“Eleven years ago, Victor’s wife gave birth to a child that everyone believed had died shortly after delivery.”

I stared at him, confused and terrified.

“What does that have to do with us?”

Dominic looked at my stomach.

“Because the doctor who signed this record is the same man who examined you today.”

He paused.

“And according to this file, he falsified the baby’s death certificate.”

The room seemed to tilt around me.

“You think my doctor knows something about my baby?”

“No.” Dominic’s expression was grim. “I think someone wanted you to visit that particular clinic.”

He took my hand again.

“And I think your pregnancy may have exposed a secret Victor Raines has spent eleven years trying to bury.”

Before I could ask another question, Marco burst through the door, his face pale.

“Boss, we found the person who leaked Miss Hart’s appointment.”

Dominic stood.

“Who?”

Marco looked at me, then at Dominic.

“Someone inside this building.”

“Name.”

Marco hesitated.

Then he said the one thing that made my entire world collapse.

“Your mother, sir.”

Dominic didn’t move.

Neither did I.

Because I suddenly remembered the anonymous message I’d received three weeks earlier, the one I’d dismissed as a wrong number.

It had contained only one sentence.

If you ever become pregnant, don’t trust the man who promises to protect you.

And now, as Dominic reached for the pH๏τograph of his mother attached to the investigation file, I realized the most dangerous person in our lives might not be Victor Raines at all.

It might be the woman who had welcomed me into the Bellano family charity gala with a kiss on the cheek—and whispered that I would make a beautiful bride for her son.