Page 63 of Twisted Addiction

I was alone with Giovanni now, the cathedral’s shadow stretching over us like a warning.

I jabbed the gun into the palm of my shaking hand as if to steady it.

“So what’s he going to do to me this time?” My voice came out thinner than I wanted; the question trembled with every memory of the cathedral—the blood, the papers, the humiliations.

Giovanni didn’t meet my eyes.

He limped toward the car with the economy of a man who’d learned to move while keeping fear tucked away.

“We need to go. Now,” he said, clipped, like a man reciting orders he already wished he hadn’t given.

I planted my boots and didn’t move. “Answer me,” I said. “What does he plan to do?”

He stopped, the streetlight throwing a hard line across his face.

For a long beat he just breathed—deep, slow—as if buying time to choose the right honesty.

When he looked up, his face had gone flush with something that might have been regret. “You know him,” he said finally, every word careful. “He decides what’s ‘best’ for people he owns. You shot a mafia boss inside a consecrated place, Penelope. Do you understand what that means? The consequences won’t be small.” His jaw tightened. “This isn’t a scuffle in a back alley. This is a statement. You’ll answer for it.”

I swallowed, the cold sinking in. “And my pregnancy?”

He exhaled, the line between promise and threat thin as a razor. “There’s a way to blunt the knife—short term. It buys time, not safety. That’s all I can promise.” He paused, eyes searching mine. “If you want to try, tell me to start.”

The words landed like a stone. “Start what?” I asked.

“We stage the abortion,” he said, slow and careful. “Make Dmitri believe it’s done. Paperwork, a doctor’s signature, falsified tests — enough to quiet him while you slip away.”

He didn’t sound eager; he sounded exhausted. “It’s messy. It’s dangerous. But it’s a chance.”

I stared at him. “If I give him that, he’ll stop pressuring me?”

Giovanni’s mouth tightened. “He’ll back off—temporarily. It’s not the heir he’s terrified of losing so much as you. After his mother died, he learned what it is to lose something that mattered to him. He’s brutal, but he’s also cowardly about certain losses. Make him think the pregnancy is gone and he’ll retreat into control instead of pursuit. It gives you space to disappear.”

Space. The word felt thin and fragile.

“How long?” I whispered.

“Two weeks, maybe three if we’re careful,” Giovanni said. “Long enough to file papers, get travel arranged, and vanish. But you have to move fast — before your bump shows, before anyone gets suspicious.”

I swallowed, the plan forming in jagged pieces. “And the doctor?”

“He’s paid. He owes me. He’ll sign whatever we need. Labs, scans — the right reports, forged clean. It’s theater, Penelope, and a damned risky one, but the stage will hold for a little while.”

I let the thought settle, treacherous and bright as a shard of glass. “Get it done,” I said finally. “If this is my chance, I’m taking it.”

Giovanni nodded, the brief flicker of relief crossing his face swallowed by the weight of what we were about to do. “Good.”

I stared at him, my pulse loud in my ears. “How ironic,” I said bitterly. “You’re helping me now — after you lured me to that cathedral knowing Dmitri would try to tear this child out of me.”

He froze, the weight of my words hanging between us like smoke. “I... I had no idea,” he said finally, his voice steady but hollow, a hollow I could feel in the pause between syllables. “He’s been... consumed by his mother’s death, unable to let it go. Everything else—deals, decisions—he’s left them to rot because he can’t move past it. I thought your presence might ground him, help him breathe, help him think. I never imagined... never in a million years... that he’d go that far.”

“Right,” I muttered, the word sharp as glass. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

His jaw tightened. “Believe what you want. But this—” he gestured vaguely to the night, to the car waiting behind us “—this will have consequences. Dmitri will find out eventually. When he does, my life ends before yours. So if you can’t trust me, at least respect the fact that I’m risking everything for you.”

Silence stretched between us, broken only by the wind whispering off the lake.

He took a step closer, his voice lower now, stripped of its usual restraint. “Get in the car, Penelope. We leave before the storm catches up to us.”