The Five-Million-Dollar Contract

The first time Melissa found Adrian on the floor, it was two in the morning.

Julian’s cries had awakened her, but by the time she reached the nursery, the baby was already quiet.

Adrian lay beside the cradle.

His wheelchair had rolled backward and struck the wall. One hand gripped the edge of the rug while the other pressed against his unresponsive thigh. Sweat shone on his forehead, and his breathing was uneven.

Julian watched from the cradle with wide, curious eyes.

Melissa hurried across the room.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re on the floor.”

“I noticed.”

She knelt beside him.

“Did you hit your head?”

“No.”

“Your back?”

“No.”

“Then why haven’t you called anyone?”

Adrian’s jaw tightened. “Because I don’t need half the mansion rushing in to watch me climb into a chair.”

“You tried to stand.”

“I tried to reach my son.”

There was enough bitterness in his voice to silence her.

Melissa looked at the cradle.

Julian’s blanket had slipped near his face. Adrian had probably seen it on the monitor and come alone, refusing to wake a nurse or guard.

“You could have called me,” she said.

“You need sleep.”

“So do you.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s not how human bodies work.”

“Mine hasn’t followed the usual rules for years.”

She moved behind him.

“Put your arm around my shoulders.”

“No.”

“Adrian.”

“I said no.”

“And I’m not leaving you here.”

He turned his face away.

“Call Marco.”

“The guard outside?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He can lift me.”

“So can I.”

“You gave birth three weeks ago.”

“And you’re stubborn every day. We all have our burdens.”

His eyes flashed.

For a second, Melissa thought he might order her out.

Instead, he gave a short, humorless laugh.

“You’re not afraid of me.”

“I haven’t decided.”

“You signed a contract with a man you believed was a murderer.”

“I signed a contract with a man who had five million dollars.”

“An important distinction.”

“Extremely.”

She guided his arm over her shoulders.

With his upper-body strength and her support, they managed to lift him high enough for him to grip the wheelchair. The movement pulled at Melissa’s healing muscles, but she refused to show pain. Adrian noticed anyway.

“Stop.”

“We’re almost there.”

“You’re hurting yourself.”

“So are you.”

He swore quietly, then used his arms to shift into the chair.

For several moments, neither spoke.

Melissa remained kneeling in front of him, catching her breath.

Adrian looked down at her.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m broken.”

His voice was lower now.

Not commanding.

Not angry.

Wounded.

Melissa studied his face.

She had heard the stories about the accident. Two years earlier, Adrian’s armored car had been forced from a bridge. The explosion killed his driver and damaged Adrian’s spine. Doctors had said he might never walk again.

The men responsible disappeared within a month.

The newspapers called it the Moretti Revenge.

Melissa had imagined Adrian directing executions from a hospital bed.

She had never imagined him alone beside a cradle, ashamed that his body had failed him.

“I don’t think you’re broken,” she said.

“You should.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone does.”

“Everyone?”

“The doctors who stop speaking to me and start speaking to the person behind my chair. The men who watch my legs when they think I won’t notice. The enemies waiting for weakness. Even my own people.”

Melissa rested her hands on her knees.

“Your people don’t think you’re weak.”

“They are paid not to.”

“And I’m paid to leave.”

Something flickered in his eyes.

“You haven’t.”

“The doctor won’t clear me.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Melissa looked toward Julian.

The baby made a small noise.

Adrian turned immediately.

She noticed how instinctive it was. No calculation. No hesitation.

“Pick him up,” she said.

Adrian’s face hardened again. “I can’t reach safely.”

“Then I’ll hand him to you.”

“You should return to bed.”

“So should he.”

Melissa stood and lifted Julian from the cradle. The baby stirred, then settled against her shoulder.

She lowered him carefully into Adrian’s arms.

Adrian looked down.

“You always hold him as if someone is about to take him,” Melissa said.

“Someone is.”

Her heartbeat stumbled.

She knew he meant her.

“The contract says—”

“I know what the contract says.”

“Then why say that?”

“Because in nine days, you will walk out of this house. He will look for your voice, and you won’t be here.”

The pain in his words was quiet and devastating.

Melissa stepped back.

“You’re the one who wanted a surrogate.”

“I wanted an heir.”

“And now?”

Adrian’s thumb brushed Julian’s cheek.

“Now I have a son.”

Melissa swallowed.

The difference should not have mattered.

It did.

Julian opened his eyes and stared at his father. Adrian began speaking softly in Italian again.

“What are you telling him?” Melissa asked.

“That he should sleep.”

“That sounded longer than necessary.”

“Italian requires emphasis.”

“You said something about enemies.”

Adrian glanced at her.

“You understand Italian?”

“Only a little.”

“How?”

“My mother used to work for an Italian family.”

It was not entirely a lie.

Evelyn had lived among Italian men once. Men who guarded doors, carried weapons, and called Melissa’s father Don Romano.

Adrian looked at her for a moment longer than was comfortable.

“What else do you understand?”

“Enough to know you promised Julian that no one would ever hurt him.”

“That does not require translation.”

“No.”

His gaze remained on her.

Melissa felt suddenly exposed.

For sixteen years, she and her mother had lived beneath false names. They had moved whenever strangers asked too many questions. Evelyn had forbidden Melissa from speaking Italian in public or wearing the silver Romano ring.

The ring now rested beneath her robe, suspended from a chain around her neck.

The last proof of who she truly was.

A secret that could kill them both.

“Why did you agree to this?” Adrian asked.

“You know why.”

“Your mother’s treatment.”

“Yes.”

“That explains the money. Not the child.”

Melissa folded her arms.

“You needed someone healthy. I qualified.”

“There were other women.”

“Then why did you choose me?”

Adrian’s expression became unreadable.

“My physician recommended you.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is the only one you’re getting tonight.”

Julian began fussing.

Melissa took the bottle prepared on the warmer.

“Let me feed him.”

Adrian held out his hand.

“I can do it.”

She gave him the bottle, then adjusted the baby’s position.

Adrian’s hands were large and scarred. The bottle looked almost delicate between his fingers.

Julian drank greedily.

A drop of milk ran down his chin.

Adrian wiped it away with surprising gentleness.

“You’ve done this before,” Melissa said.

“No.”

“You look experienced.”

“I study problems before attempting to solve them.”

“He’s not a problem.”

“He wakes every ninety minutes, communicates through screaming, and rejects every solution until we discover the correct one. That is the definition of a problem.”

Melissa laughed.

The sound surprised both of them.

It was the first time she had laughed since entering the mansion.

Adrian stared.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re looking at me strangely again.”

“I didn’t know you could make jokes.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I described a situation accurately.”

“Of course.”

Julian finished half the bottle and fell asleep.

Adrian continued holding him.

Melissa sat on the edge of the daybed.

“Tell me about the accident,” she said.

His body went still.

“No.”

“I’ve seen the reports.”

“Then you know enough.”

“I know your car went off a bridge.”

“Yes.”

“I know two men died.”

“My driver and a guard.”

“And I know the authorities blamed mechanical failure.”

“They were wrong.”

“Who did it?”

Adrian looked toward the dark window.

“The Vescari family.”

The name had been spoken in the mansion several times since the intercepted message. Every time, guards became quieter.

“Why?”

“They wanted the eastern docks.”

“And you refused?”

“I offered them a fair division.”

“They responded by trying to kill you.”

“They are not reasonable men.”

“Why didn’t they finish the war?”

“They believed the accident had.”

Melissa understood.

“They thought the wheelchair made you weak.”

Adrian’s mouth curved without humor.

“They learned otherwise.”

She should have been frightened.

Instead, she looked at the tired man holding their sleeping child.

“Do you regret surviving?”

His eyes snapped to hers.

The question hung between them.

Finally, he said, “Sometimes.”

Melissa’s chest tightened.

“When?”

“When pain makes sleep impossible. When I remember the men who died beside me. When someone has to lift me into a car. When I watch other men carry their children without calculating the angle of a chair.”

She looked at Julian.

“He doesn’t care whether you can walk.”

“He will.”

“No. He’ll care whether you stay.”

Adrian’s expression shifted.

Melissa stood and approached him.

“You’re going to make mistakes,” she continued. “You’ll hold him wrong. You’ll lose your patience. You’ll probably teach him terrible habits.”

“I have excellent habits.”

“You threaten people before breakfast.”

“Only when necessary.”

“But he will know you came when he cried.”

Adrian looked down at Julian.

“And what will he know about you?”

Melissa could not answer.

A knock interrupted them.

Marco, Adrian’s chief guard, entered.

“We found the leak.”

Adrian handed the baby to Melissa.

“Who?”

“A nurse from the private maternity wing. She sold the birth date and the child’s sex to an intermediary.”

“Alive?”

“For now.”

Melissa’s stomach turned.

Adrian’s face became cold.

“Find out who paid her. Then remove her from the city.”

Marco nodded.

“No killing,” Melissa said.

Both men looked at her.

She held Julian tighter.

“The nurse betrayed you, but killing her won’t erase what she did.”

Adrian’s eyes narrowed.

“This is not your concern.”

“She helped care for my son. It is my concern.”

“She placed him in danger.”

“Then send her away. Take her license. Make sure she can’t do it again. But don’t make Julian’s birth the reason someone dies.”

Marco glanced between them.

No one interrupted Adrian Moretti.

No one except Melissa.

Adrian remained silent for a long moment.

“Do as she says,” he told Marco. “No body.”

Marco left.

Melissa stared at him.

“You listened.”

“Do not sound surprised.”

“You’re known for making people disappear.”

“Reputations are useful.”

“Are the stories untrue?”

“Some.”

“And the others?”

Adrian looked at her steadily.

“The others are why you and Julian are safe.”

Melissa felt the weight of the truth between them.

He was not innocent.

Neither was the family she came from.

Her father had been called honorable by the men who served him, but honor in their world still carried a gun.

A sudden crash sounded somewhere below.

Adrian reached beneath his shirt and drew a pistol from a hidden holster.

Melissa froze.

Marco’s voice came through the radio attached to Adrian’s chair.

“False alarm. Kitchen staff dropped a tray.”

Adrian lowered the weapon but did not put it away immediately.

Julian slept through everything.

Melissa stared at the gun.

“This is what his life will be?”

“No.”

“How can you promise that?”

“Because I will end the Vescari threat before he is old enough to remember it.”

“And then another enemy comes.”

“I will end them too.”

“You can’t kill every danger.”

“No.”

Adrian’s gaze moved to her.

“But I can make them fear coming near my family.”

The word struck her harder than it should have.

Family.

Not surrogate.

Not employee.

Not Melissa Hart, the woman who would disappear in nine days.

She lowered her eyes to Julian, afraid Adrian might see how deeply that single word had reached her.

Later, after Adrian returned to his study, Melissa stood alone before the nursery mirror.

She pulled the silver chain from beneath her robe.

The Romano ring caught the moonlight.

Her father’s crest was engraved into the darkened silver: a crowned wolf surrounded by olive branches.

Strength and peace.

Don Gabriel Romano had believed a powerful man should be capable of both.

He had died during a massacre at a country estate sixteen years earlier. According to Evelyn, he had gone back into the burning house to rescue a wounded boy. Melissa and her mother had escaped through a service tunnel while gunfire echoed behind them.

They never learned the boy’s identity.

They never saw Gabriel alive again.

Melissa closed her fist around the ring.

The Vescari family had been blamed for the massacre.

But her father’s lieutenant, Victor Salerno, had inherited the Romano territory afterward. He had hunted Evelyn and Melissa until they vanished under false identities.

Now the Vescari family was attacking Adrian.

And Adrian had somehow chosen Melissa from hundreds of possible women.

Perhaps it was coincidence.

Perhaps fate had a cruel sense of humor.

Or perhaps the secrets connecting their families had begun long before either of them understood.

Behind her, Julian started to cry.

Melissa tucked the ring away and lifted him into her arms.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

The nursery door opened.

Adrian appeared without knocking.

For a moment, they simply looked at one another.

Then he rolled closer.