My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the pregnancy test onto the bathroom floor

Two weeks had passed since Alessandro had appeared at the diner, and miraculously, he hadn't shown up again.

Elizabeth had convinced herself—or tried desperately to convince herself—that he had grown bored. Billionaires had short attention spans, right? They chased what was elusive, and once the thrill of the hunt faded, they moved on to the next acquisition.

She was wrong.

It was a rainy Thursday evening when the trap finally sprung.

Elizabeth was working the front register at a quiet boutique bookstore near the Loop—a new job she had taken after quitting the diner to put distance between herself and her old routine—when a sleek black town car pulled up to the curb outside.

Before she could even duck into the employee breakroom, two men in identical dark suits walked through the glass doors of the shop. They didn't look like customers. They looked like professional security operatives.

“Miss Elizabeth Miller?” the taller one asked, his voice flat, polite, and entirely devoid of warmth.

Elizabeth froze, a stack of paperback novels slipping from her hands and scattering across the wooden floor. Miller. They didn't call her Emma. They used her real, buried surname.

“I... I think you have the wrong person,” she stammered, backing away toward the counter.

“Mr. Vitali is waiting in the car,” the operative said, stepping forward with quiet, irresistible authority. “It will save everyone a great deal of time if you walk out to him willingly.”

Resistance was pointless. She knew it, and they knew it.

Ten minutes later, Elizabeth found herself sitting in the back of the same Maybach, staring across the leather cabin at Alessandro.

He looked devastatingly handsome, sitting calmly with a leather portfolio resting on his knees. But his amber eyes were as cold as winter ice.

“Elizabeth,” he said, using her real name like a loaded weapon.

She flinched as if she had been struck. “You... you know.”

“Did you really think a fake name and a dye job would keep you hidden from me?” Alessandro asked quietly, flipping open the leather portfolio. He pulled out a single sheet of paper and slid it across the table toward her.

Elizabeth looked down.

It was a detailed dossier. Her real birth certificate. Newspaper clippings from three years ago detailing the fiery crash of her parents’ car—and the corporate embezzlement scandal involving her father’s firm, Miller & Associates, which had been systematically destroyed by a hostile takeover.

And at the bottom of the page was a highlighted corporate name: Vitali Holdings.

Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat. The room spun. The company that had ruined her father, driven him to despair, and indirectly caused the accident that killed her parents... was Alessandro’s company.

“You did this,” she whispered, tears of betrayal burning her eyes as she looked up at him. “Your family destroyed my father’s company. You destroyed my life.”

Alessandro’s face went completely pale. The cold, calculating corporate titan vanished in an instant, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated shock.

“What?” Alessandro breathed, leaning forward. “Elizabeth, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me!” she sobbed, finally letting out the agony she had bottled up for years. “Your father’s holding company bought out my father’s firm right before the scandal broke! You people framed him, you stole his life’s work, and you killed my family!”

Alessandro stared at her, his amber eyes wide with horror as the pieces of the puzzle violently slammed together in his mind.

“Elizabeth... my father died six years ago,” Alessandro said, his voice trembling with a raw, desperate urgency. “When I took over Vitali Holdings, I spent two years auditing every hostile takeover my father executed. I found out he framed innocent men. I fired the executives responsible, and I set up a confidential restitution fund to repay every family he ruined.”

Elizabeth stared at him, her chest heaving. “Restitution? You think money brings my parents back?”

“No,” Alessandro said softly, reaching across the car to grab her shaking hands. This time, she didn't pull away. She was too broken, too exhausted to fight. “It doesn't bring them back. But it means I wasn't your enemy, Elizabeth. I never was.”

He reached up, gently wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb. Then, his gaze dropped instinctively to her stomach, where her hands were trembling defensively over her coat.

“And it means something else,” Alessandro whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “When my investigators pulled your file... they found a medical record from a clinic near your apartment dated two weeks ago.”