Chapter 2 - The Uncle Who Wanted an Heir
Dylan moved before Renzo finished speaking.
He pulled me behind the marble kitchen island as a sharp crack sounded from the hallway. Glass shattered above us, raining across the floor.
Dylan pressed one hand against the back of my head.
“Stay down.”
His voice carried none of the indifference he had shown inside his office.
Footsteps entered the penthouse.
At least three men.
Perhaps more.
Dylan reached beneath the island and opened a concealed compartment. He removed a handgun, checked it, and placed a second weapon in my hand.
I stared at it.
“I don’t know how to use this.”
“You may not have to.”
“That is not comforting.”
His eyes met mine in the darkness.
“Point away from yourself. Keep your finger off the trigger until someone comes close.”
A flashlight beam crossed the ceiling.
Dylan touched my shoulder, then moved toward the far side of the room. He threw a crystal glass across the floor.
It shattered near the balcony.
Two intruders turned toward the sound.
Dylan struck the first from behind and drove the second into the wall before either could react. The third man raised his weapon.
I saw the movement before Dylan did.
“Left!” I shouted.
Dylan dropped.
The shot buried itself in the cabinet behind him.
I raised the gun with both hands.
The intruder saw me and hesitated.
That hesitation saved us.
Dylan crossed the room, disarmed him, and forced him to the floor.
Emergency power flickered on.
The penthouse looked like a storm had passed through it. Glass covered the carpet. A lamp burned near the curtain. One security guard lay unconscious beside the elevator.
Renzo was gone.
The entire attack had lasted less than two minutes.
Dylan immediately came to me.
“Were you hit?”
“No.”
He checked my arms, shoulders, and face himself.
“I’m fine.”
His hand stopped above my stomach, close enough to feel the life he had rejected but not close enough to touch it.
“You were poisoned.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The capsules were switched.”
“Then take me to a hospital.”
He nodded once.
We used the private stairwell because the elevators could no longer be trusted. Two loyal guards met us on the twentieth floor and escorted us into an armored vehicle beneath the building.
Dylan did not release my hand during the drive.
At Harbor Saint Medical Center, a physician ran blood tests and performed an ultrasound. The room remained dark except for the blue light of the screen.
I watched our child appear in shades of gray.
A small heart beat rapidly inside me.
The sound filled the room.
Dylan stopped breathing.
The doctor adjusted the monitor.
“The baby appears healthy. Mrs. Marchetti’s bloodwork shows no evidence that she ingested the substituted medication.”
Relief weakened my entire body.
“How?” Dylan asked.
“I stopped taking the vitamins three days ago,” I said. “They made me nauseous.”
The doctor continued explaining follow-up tests, but Dylan never looked away from the screen.
For the first time, our child had become something more than a sentence spoken inside an office.
The baby moved.
Dylan’s fingers tightened around mine.
After the doctor left, silence returned.
“You said the child changed nothing,” I whispered.
His gaze remained on the dark monitor.
“I was wrong.”
“That is not enough.”
“I know.”
He sat beside the bed.
“Renzo has wanted control of the family since my father died. He cannot take it while I remain head of the council.”
“What does our baby have to do with that?”
“Everything.”
Under Marchetti tradition, control passed through a direct family line. If Dylan died without an heir, Renzo became the legal steward of the businesses, trusts, and properties until the council selected a permanent successor.
But if Dylan had a child, Renzo’s path disappeared.
“So he tried to harm the baby.”
Dylan’s jaw tightened.
“He may have planned to harm both of you.”
The truth entered the room slowly.
Renzo’s gentle questions.
His careful observation when I became nauseous.
The replaced vitamins.
“He knew before Dylan did,” I said.
Dylan looked toward the window.
“I should have recognized his interest in you.”
“You were rarely home.”
The words landed between us.
He did not defend himself.
“I believed distance protected you,” he said.
“From whom?”
“From my enemies.”
“It made me available to them.”
His eyes closed briefly.
Love is an open door, he had told me.
Now he understood that an empty room could be just as dangerous.
Dylan’s security chief entered carrying a tablet.
Renzo had disappeared from his residence. Four council members had also gone missing. Bank accounts connected to the family businesses were being drained into foreign holdings.
Someone had sent news outlets an anonymous message claiming Dylan had attacked his wife after learning she carried another man’s child.
I laughed once, without humor.
“He rejected the baby and now someone claims it is not his.”
Dylan’s expression hardened.
“Renzo is preparing the council to remove me.”
“Then he needs me discredited.”
“He needs you dead or silent.”
A hospital administrator entered minutes later with a transfer request. According to the document, Dylan had ordered me moved to a private clinic outside Chicago for security reasons.
He had signed nothing.
The ambulance was already waiting downstairs.
Renzo’s people had reached the hospital.
Dylan ordered the entire floor sealed. We left through a restricted loading entrance wearing borrowed medical clothing. A nurse helped cover my hair beneath a cap while Dylan changed into plain black scrubs.
For a feared man, he looked strangely ordinary dressed without his tailored suit.
We drove north beneath a winter sky.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere the family does not know.”
“My brother arranged a safe house in Wisconsin.”
Dylan turned toward me.
“You contacted Elias.”
“Yes.”
“He has no reason to protect me.”
“He is protecting me.”
“Will he tell Arthur?”
“No.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because our father is the person he is protecting me from.”
Dylan looked ahead.
Our marriage had joined two powerful families, but neither side had ever asked whether I felt safe inside it.
We met Elias at an abandoned airfield outside the city. A small aircraft waited near the runway.
My brother stepped from an SUV and embraced me without acknowledging Dylan.
Then he noticed Dylan’s hand resting protectively behind my back.
“You told her the child changed nothing,” Elias said.
Dylan’s face remained still.
“She told you.”
“She tells me the truth.”
The insult struck its target.
“We do not have time for this,” I said.
Elias handed me a folder.
“Mother’s property is ready. The caretaker knows you are coming.”
Dylan examined the aircraft.
“Renzo will monitor roads and airports.”
“This plane is registered to a Canadian medical foundation,” Elias replied. “No Marchetti or Hartwell name appears anywhere.”
Dylan looked almost impressed.
Then his phone rang.
My father’s name appeared.
Arthur Hartwell did not ask whether I was safe.
He demanded that I return to Lake Forest immediately and publicly deny the rumors.
“Our investors are nervous,” he said.
“I was nearly poisoned.”
“You are carrying a child whose legitimacy is being questioned.”
“By a man trying to kill me.”
“Then stand beside your husband and stop appearing weak.”
I looked toward Dylan.
He had heard every word.
“No,” I said.
My father fell silent.
“No?”
“I will not return so you can display me at a press conference.”
“You forget what your marriage was designed to accomplish.”
“I remember exactly. It was designed to protect your contracts.”
“Leslie—”
“Mother left me a safe house because she knew one day I might need protection from all of you.”
The line went quiet.
My father had not known about the property.
That frightened him.
“You will tell me where you are,” he said.
“No.”
I ended the call.
Elias placed a hand on my shoulder.
“You just declared war on him.”
“No,” I replied. “I stopped surrendering.”
We boarded the aircraft.
As Chicago disappeared beneath the clouds, Dylan sat across from me, watching the city where his uncle was stealing his empire.
“You should stay in Wisconsin,” he said.
“And you?”
“I return tomorrow.”
“To face Renzo?”
“Yes.”
“He wants you dead.”
“He wants my name, my authority, and the fear attached to both.”
“You think walking back into Chicago alone proves strength?”
“It proves I am not hiding behind my pregnant wife.”
“You are still deciding everything without me.”
His expression changed.
I leaned forward.
“Renzo attacked both of us. My father is using the scandal. The child is mine too. You do not get to lock me in a safe house and call it protection.”
“What do you want?”
“To know the whole plan.”
Dylan hesitated.
For the first time in our marriage, he began telling me the truth.
Renzo controlled three family captains and several city officials. He had also been negotiating secretly with Arthur Hartwell to break apart the alliance and divide Dylan’s shipping routes.
My father was working with Renzo.
The marriage meant to create peace had been used to hide a second betrayal.
Before Dylan finished, Elias received a message from Chicago.
Our father had ordered every Hartwell account connected to me frozen.
He had also announced that I was emotionally unstable and being held against my will by Dylan.
May you like
The aircraft had not even landed.
Yet both our families were already preparing to erase my voice.
