My breath hitched, and I felt a sudden wave of nausea.

“Every word, every promise,” I said, looking out the window at the dark streets. “It was all calculated to get my inheritance.”

“Yes,” Dante said. “Evelyn found the weakness in your family’s trust structure, and Marcus was the weapon she used to breach it.”

“They used me as financial collateral,” I said, the bitter truth tasting like ash in my mouth.

“They needed your signature to unlock the secondary trusts,” Dante explained. “The moment you signed those papers, they began draining the accounts to pay off the syndicate.”

I gripped the tablet tightly, my knuckles turning white.

“I fell for all of it,” I said.

“You were innocent,” Dante said, his hand briefly resting over mine, his grip firm and warm. “They are predators. But they made a mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“They left you alive,” he said simply. “And they did not expect me to intervene.”

The SUV swerved around a sharp corner, the tires splashing through deep puddles of rainwater.

I looked down at my stomach, a sudden pang of anxiety striking me as I thought of the future.