Chapter 15 - Stay
Eliza remained in the hospital for nine days.
Nine days of monitoring.
Nine days of uncertainty.
Nine days in which none of the conspiracies mattered.
No inheritance.
No Crown.
No secret files.
Only a tiny heartbeat on a monitor.
Mark slept in a chair beside her bed.
He never complained.
One morning Eliza woke and found his hand resting beside hers.
Not touching.
Waiting.
She moved her fingers over his.
He opened his eyes.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You snore.”
“I was tortured in a basement.”
“That is not an excuse.”
He smiled.
Then she became serious.
“I don’t know whether we can fix us.”
“I know.”
“But I want to try.”
Mark stopped breathing.
“Try?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
She saw tears.
“I’ll take try.”
Their reconciliation was not dramatic.
No passionate declaration.
No instant forgiveness.
Mark began therapy.
He testified.
He answered every question Eliza asked even when the answer hurt him.
Trust returned in inches.
Dominic visited daily.
Usually with terrible food.
One afternoon he brought pancakes from a restaurant.
Eliza looked disappointed.
“You didn’t make them?”
“I care about the baby too much.”
She laughed.
Their strange friendship became one of the few uncomplicated things in her life.
Dominic was not the man Mark warned her about anymore.
Maybe he never fully had been.
People could change.
That became the central truth Eliza chose to believe.
Victoria eventually requested to see her.
Everyone advised against it.
Eliza went anyway.
Victoria looked much smaller in the hospital bed.
Illness had stripped away the power she wore like armor.
“You came,” Victoria said.
“I wanted to see whether I hated you.”
“And?”
Eliza considered.
“I don’t know.”
Victoria smiled faintly.
“You are kinder than Isabella.”
“No.”
Eliza sat.
“I just don’t want you living in my head.”
Victoria looked toward the window.
“I thought if I controlled enough, no one could hurt me.”
“And how did that work?”
A weak laugh.
“Poorly.”
“Why did you hate my mother?”
“I didn’t.”
Eliza stared.
“I envied her.”
“Why?”
“She could leave.”
Victoria’s eyes filled.
“I never did.”
For the first time, Eliza saw not a villain but a ruined woman who had repeatedly chosen wrong.
It did not excuse her.
Understanding was not forgiveness.
That mattered.
Victoria died six weeks later.
Eliza did not attend a public funeral.
There wasn’t one.
Dominic buried her privately beside Gabriel’s false grave.
“That seems complicated,” Eliza said.
“Our family specializes in complicated graves.”
She laughed.
By Eliza’s twenty-first week of pregnancy, the medical crisis had stabilized.
The baby was healthy.
A boy.
Mark cried when they learned.
“So much for the mysterious mafia heiress.”
Eliza smiled.
“He can be a mysterious accounting major.”
“No child deserves accounting.”
“Fair.”
They chose not to reveal the name publicly.
Social media continued calling him the Mafia Baby.
Eliza hated it.
Jenna found it hilarious.
She created a private baby shower cake reading:
NOT THE MAFIA BABY.
Eliza laughed until she cried.
For a few months, life began resembling normal.
Then James Holloway returned.
He walked into a federal prosecutor’s office voluntarily.
He carried one final file.
It proved Crown had funded violence tied to Dominic’s father.
Including the accident that killed Catherine’s husband.
Catherine finally received the truth she had spent decades seeking.
But James’s evidence also implicated himself.
He accepted prison.
Eliza visited once.
“You could have run.”
“I spent my entire life running.”
He looked at her.
“I wanted to do one thing you could respect.”
“I don’t know if I respect you.”
He nodded.
“But I’m glad you stopped running.”
That was enough.
As Eliza stood to leave, James said:
“Your mother would have loved you.”
Eliza turned.
“Catherine does.”
James smiled sadly.
“I meant Isabella.”
Eliza swallowed.
“I know.”
On the courthouse steps, Mark waited.
He held an umbrella.
Rain fell exactly as it had the night everything began.
Eliza looked at him.
“Do you remember the ultrasound?”
“I remember thinking I was about to have a heart attack.”
“You literally replied, ‘Is it mine?’”
“That was not my finest moment.”
“That wasn’t you.”
Mark stopped.
She smiled.
“The wrong number.”
They both laughed.
It felt impossible.
The message that began everything had gone not to Mark, but to Dominic.
Because the phone number had once belonged to Mark and had been reassigned through one of Dominic’s secure lines.
A tiny bureaucratic accident.
One wrong tap.
One wrong number.
And somehow it exposed an empire.
Mark put his arm around her.
Then Eliza’s expression changed.
“What?”
She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her stomach.
The baby kicked.
Mark froze.
Again.
His eyes filled.
“Hey.”
Eliza smiled.
“Your son has opinions.”
“He gets that from you.”
Then the baby kicked harder.
Mark laughed.
For one peaceful moment, nothing else existed.
But several blocks away, a man photographed them.
He sent the image to an encrypted number.
A response came.
May you like
Wait until the child is born.
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