Page 35 of The Underboss's Secret Twins

I force my body to go still, to stop struggling against the restraints. If I look like I’m breaking, they’ll underestimate me. If I play along, they’ll let something slip.

Then—

The man sighs. “I need to make a quick call, darling. Excuse me a moment.”

A slow exhale. The shift of fabric.Beep.A pause.

Beep. Bop. Bop. Beep.

Each sound pierces the quiet like a drop of water in a cave—not the rushed fumble of someone making a casual call, but the keystrokes of a man who knows this number by heart and only dials it when he wants something to burn. The phone rises. I hear the lift of his arm, the faint brushing of fabric near his jaw.

He waits, his breathing loud as the phone begins ringing. I can hear because it’s on speaker. After two rings, a sharp, impatient voice fills the thin space between us.

"What do you know?"

Everything inside me stills.

Ice floods my veins, spreading through my limbs like liquid metal, weighing me down.

The voice belongs to Marco.

I inhale sharply through my nose, but it feels like there’s no air left in the SUV. My pulse slams into my ribs, too fast, too erratic. My world narrows to the deep cadence of his voice—low, edged with irritation.

The bastard beside me chuckles, tapping his fingers against his knee in an easy rhythm. He’s savoring this. He wants me to react, to break, to let the doubt sink its claws into my mind and stay there.

When he speaks, his voice is too theatrical, a performance dripping with manufactured urgency.

"Marco!" he says, voice thick with faux panic. "I sent word, I called the guard as soon as it happened, but I… Sofia?—"

Something snaps inside me.

Not fear.

Recognition.

Because it’s wrong. Too eager. Too precise. Too perfectly timed. And why does the man sound likeheis panicking? He’s the one who kidnapped me, and yet, he speaks like a victim, not a culprit.

This isn’t a ransom call. This is a setup.

I wrench my body toward the sound, trying to see, but the blindfold robs me of that luxury. My wrists burn against the restraints as I twist, straining forward even though I know it’s futile.

Marco’s response is immediate—but muffled. A sharp intake of breath, a shift in his tone—he’s saying something, but before I can make out what?—

The call cuts off.

The man beside me has ended it.

The silence that follows is suffocating. And then—laughter. Low, rumbling, cruel.

"Was that Marco?" I whisper, my voice barely my own. At this stage, this is stating the obvious, but I want him to confirm just the same.

The bastard next to me grins, his pleasure dripping into every syllable. "Yes, sweetheart. That was your hero, all right."

My chest constricts. The walls of my mind start to cave in, panic and confusion tangling into a mess of paranoia that makes me wonder, for one long second, if Marco was behind this.

Did he know? Did he hand me over to the enemy to appease Luca?

No.