I opened my eyes slowly. The penthouse. I was back in my bedroom, lying on top of the covers. Afternoon light filtered through the windows—how long had I been unconscious?
"You're awake."
I turned my head to find Luca sitting in the armchair near the window, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. His expression was carefully controlled, but I could see the fury simmering beneath.
"What were you doing in the service stairwell, Sienna?"
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Pain shot through my shoulder and hip where I'd hit the concrete.
"Easy." He was beside me in an instant, hands steadying me as I struggled upright. "You took a bad fall. The doctor said you have bruising, but nothing broken."
"Doctor?" Panic spiked through me. "What doctor? What did they—"
"My personal physician. Discreet. Thorough." His eyes bored into mine. "And very good at his job."
The weight of his words settled over me like a shroud.
He knew.
"Luca—"
"Were you trying to run?" His voice was deceptively calm. "Or were you trying to kill yourself?"
"What? No! I would never—"
"Then what were you doing in a service stairwell at nine in the morning?" He stood abruptly, pacing to the window. "Angelo found you unconscious on the twenty-fifth floor landing. You could have broken your neck. You could have—" He stopped, jawclenched.
I wrapped my arms around myself. "I needed to get out. Just for an hour. I was going to come back."
"To get what, Sienna?" He turned to face me. "What was so important that you risked your life—riskedbothyour lives?"
The emphasis on "both" confirmed it.
"You know," I whispered.
"The doctor confirmed it when he examined you after the fall. Six to seven weeks pregnant." His expression was unreadable. "Were you ever going to tell me?"
The question hung in the air between us, heavy with accusation.
"I needed to be sure first," I said, hating how defensive I sounded. "I wasn't going to tell you about a maybe. I needed proof."
"So you risked falling down a flight of stairs to get what—a pregnancy test from a pharmacy?" His voice rose slightly. "You could have asked me. I would have gotten you whatever you needed."
"And you would have known," I shot back. "You would have controlled the information, controlled the situation, controlled me. Like you control everything else."
He flinched as if I'd struck him. "Is that really what you think?"
"What else am I supposed to think?" I gestured at the room, the locked-down penthouse, my gilded cage. "You've kept me isolated here for weeks. I can't make a phone call without your permission. Can't leave without an escort. Can't even order a damn pregnancy test without it becoming a security issue."
"Because there are people trying to kill us!" His control finally cracked. "Because the moment our enemies know you're carrying my child, you become the ultimate target. Did you think about that while you were sneaking down service stairwells? Did you think about what would happen if someone other than Angelo had found you?"
The raw fear in his voice caught me off guard.
"I was careful—"
"You fell down a flight of fucking stairs, Sienna. That's not careful. That's reckless. That's—" He turned away, running a hand through his hair. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter but no less intense. "You're pregnant. With my child. A Romano-Moretti heir. Do you understand what that means?"
"That I'm even more of a prisoner than before?"
