Page 123 of Blood Debt

“Not yours,” he says quietly, his eyes glinting with something fierce, something that pierces through my walls. “Ours.”

The single correction hits me like a weight and a balm all at once. My chest swells, my defenses crumbling in a rush of relief and ache. I melt into him, into the certainty of his words, and press my forehead to his.

“Ours,” I repeat, my whisper trembling against his lips.

Bianca looks up at us with wide, curious eyes, and I fold her closer into my embrace, wrapping my arms around both of them. For the first time since this nightmare began, I feel it—something solid, something whole. A family.

Epilogue – Serafina

Melbourne Prison - Six Months Later

The clanging of the prison gates echoes down the concrete hallway as I walk, my heels tapping softly against the cold floor. A guard gestures me into a small visitation room—metal chairs, scratched table bolted to the ground. I sit, my back straight, hands folded, my pulse steady though my heart beats like a drum in my chest.

The door opens. Chains clink. And then she appears.

Alessandra Morelli.

Her once-perfect bob has grown out. The elegance she once carried into every room is gone, replaced by a hollow stiffness. She lowers herself into the chair opposite me, the cuffs rattling against the table. And then I notice it—her belly. She’s pregnant.

Her eyes narrow. “Did you come to brag?” she asks, her voice brittle, laced with venom, but under it—fear.

I lean forward. “No. I came to remind you—you owe me your life.”

Her lips curl, but I don’t let her speak.

“You should be dead, Alessandra. Cristofano wanted it. Matteo wanted it. Hell, even your own family would’ve preferred it. But I pleaded for you. I convinced him to spare you.” My voice breaks slightly, not from pity, but the weight of memory. “This…prison cell? That baby you’re carrying? You only have them because I begged him not to kill you.”

For a moment, her face twists. She slams her cuffed hands against the table, the sound sharp. “You think I should thank you?”

I hold her gaze, unflinching. “No. I think you should understand.”

Marcello Vitale’s fate had been swift. The Mafia does not forgive failure, and betrayal is a disease they cut out at the root. He had been executed publicly, his body left as a warning in the square where he once boasted of his rise. His empire crumbled with him, and every family that once whispered his name spat it out like poison.

As for Alessandra—her fall was quieter, but just as brutal. Her powerful family, desperate to distance themselves from her, pinned petty money-laundering charges on her. They severed every tie. No visits. No protection. No inheritance. She was erased from her own bloodline.

And so she sits here, not the queen she dreamed of being, but a discarded pawn, pregnant and forgotten.

Her eyes glisten, but she masks it with a sneer. “You took everything from me,” she whispers hoarsely.

“No, Alessandra,” I answer, my fingers tightening on the edge of the table. “You did that yourself. You let Marcello use you. You let your obsession blind you. And in the end, you betrayed not just me, not just Cristofano—but yourself.”

Her breath hitches, and for the first time, I see it—the crack in her façade. She leans back, chains rattling, her hand drifting protectively to her belly.

Alessandra scoffs, her lips twisting in bitter defiance. “Why are you even here?”

I lean forward, my voice trembling with anger, but sharp as a blade. “Because you killed my friend. I buried her twice.”

The words rip out of me, raw, dragging me back to that day—the fresh soil under my knees, my body wracked with sobs as I pressed trembling fingers to the headstone. I had thought I’d lost Isla once when she disappeared, but lowering her into the ground a second time shattered something inside me. My tears had stained the earth.

Alessandra laughs.

My hands clench on the table. “When your child is born,” I whisper, my voice shaking but steady, “it will be taken from you. Given to your family. You will never hold it. Never rock it to sleep. Never hear it call you mother.”

The laugh dies in her throat. Her sapphire eyes widen, panic flashing there.

I lean closer, my breath trembling but fierce. “I will make sure your child is a stranger to you. You will rot in here. Forever.”

“Liar!” she spits, lunging forward, her cuffed hands straining across the table. She tries to grab at me, her nails catching air.