Chapter 8
ELIA STARED AT HIM.
The words made no sense.For a moment she thought she must have misunderstood. That exhaustion, fear, and the lingering heat between them had twisted what she’d heard into something impossible.
“My father?” she repeated. “I don’t have a father.”
“Don Vittorio claims he’s your father.”
“No. That’s not possible.”
Magnus didn’t move. He stood near the windows, the phone still in his hand, his expression unreadable in the dim light.“Apparently, it is.”
The words struck her harder than if he’d shouted them.“That’s not possible,” she repeated.Her voice sounded thin to her own ears.“My father is dead.”
Magnus watched her carefully.“No,” he said. “He isn’t. Your father is very much alive.”
Elia stared at Magnus as if he’d spoken in a language she didn’t understand.Her mind snagged on the wordfatherand refused to move past it.“No,” she insisted.It came out flat, not dramatic and not tearful.
No. Because if she accepted it, everything collapsed.
Magnus didn’t move. He dropped the phone on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed with his forearms braced on his thighs, posture taut, gaze fixed on her face. The suite was dim, the lamps turned down, the city beyond the windows reduced to scattered points of light.
He watched her like he was measuring a perimeter.
Elia tightened her grip on the sheet pulled high over her chest. It was the only thing between her bare skin and Magnus’s gaze, areflexive barrier she clung to without thinking. Tonight it did nothing to steady her. It only reminded her how exposed shewas.
“My mother—” Her voice faltered as memories collided in her mind: her mother’s tight smile, the way questions about her father had always been redirected, the silent fear that used to settle into the room whenever Elia pressed toohard.
“Who did she tell you your father was?” Magnus asked.
The question hit like a blow. If Magnus was right, then every silence, every deflection suddenly carried a different import. Elia’s throat tightened as she searched her memory for a single name, asingle hint her mother might have left behind.
“She refused to name him,” she admitted, the words coming out gruffer than she intended, because the realization creeping through her was far worse than ignorance. It meant her motherhad known exactly who he was. And his identity... Dear God, his identity was why she’d remained silent.
Magnus’s expression didn’t shift as he said ever so gently, “Don Vittorio is your father.”
She shook her head. “How can you be so certain?”
“Because he said so and I believe him. Aman like Vittorio Donati doesn’t casually claim an illegitimate daughter. Admitting that kind of blood tie creates leverage, risk, and attention he would normally avoid. Men like him protect their reputations too carefully to invent something like that without reason.”
“No,” she said again, but the denial had already lost itsedge.
Magnus didn’t move toward comfort. He didn’t reach for the easy reassurance most men would have offered, the kind of softness meant to smooth over pain for a moment but collapse the instant reality pushed back. Instead he stayed exactly where he was, steady and watchful, letting the truth stand between them without disguise.
“He knew your birth date,” he said. “He knew your mother’s name. And he wanted to know how long you’ve been under Severin protection.”
Protection.
The word should have steadied her.Instead it sharpened everything.“He always watched me,” Elia said before she could stop herself. “I never understood why.”
Magnus’s jaw tightened a fraction, the only visible reaction he allowed. “Now you know,” he said, without temperingthe answer.
The simple response landed between them with brutal finality, and Elia’s stomach twisted as the last of her denial slipped away.She turned away, the movement abrupt. Sliding off the bed, she crossed to the window, still clutching the sheet around her body. The glass reflected her, pale and wide-eyed, hair a dark spill over her shoulders.She pressed her palm to the coolpane.
Her life had always been a series of endless humiliations.This was different.This was the ground being removed.“I would have known,” she insisted. “Wouldn’t I? There would have been something. Alook. Aword.”
Magnus came up behind her. He didn’t touch her, but his presence filled the space.“Not if they didn’t want you to,” hesaid.
