He Called Her a Traitor and Threw Her Out Into the Storm — Then Learned the Quiet Woman He Lost Was Born to a Mafia Dynasty.
PART 4
“I came into that bathroom tonight intending to tell you the truth,” she said.
Weston’s face changed slightly. “What truth?”
She touched the pregnancy test through the fabric of her pocket. One sentence would change everything. *I am carrying your child.* Another would make him understand the scale of his mistake. *My name is Odalys Marchetti.*
But trust demanded more than believing someone only after learning they possessed power. If Weston could not defend Priya Osei, then he did not deserve Odalys Marchetti’s surrender.
She removed her hand from her pocket. “It no longer matters.”
She walked into the closet and took down a plain duffel bag, packing jeans, sweaters, practical shoes, toiletries, and the leather journal containing names she had not contacted in ten years.
When she returned, Weston stood before the windows with his back toward her.
She placed the penthouse key on the table. “I hope you find your traitor.”
He did not turn.
“When you discover it was never me, do not come looking for Priya Osei. She will no longer exist.”
—
The private elevator carried her down through eighty floors of steel, glass, and memories.
Behind the penthouse windows, Weston watched her emerge onto the sidewalk. Then Priya stopped beside the curb, bent slightly as nausea tightened her stomach, and pressed a hand beneath her coat.
Weston took one involuntary step toward the elevator.
Silas’s voice returned to his mind. *She played you. Do not let sentiment make you weak.*
Weston remained where he was.
Down on the street, Priya straightened, lifted her face into the rain, and whispered to the life inside her. “It is you and me now, little one. I failed to choose the right man, but I will never fail to choose you.”
She disappeared into a cab.
—
Six weeks later, his empire was bleeding from a dozen wounds.
A trucking company under Kade control lost its city contracts after financial records were leaked. Two gambling rooms in Brooklyn were raided. A storage facility in Queens burned before dawn. Three senior captains abandoned New York rather than risk becoming Voss’s next targets.
His brother, Marcus, urged patience. Silas demanded retaliation. Weston slept less than three hours a night and began seeing Priya in every silent room.
Her tea remained in the kitchen cabinet. A tortoiseshell hair clip lay behind a lamp.
Silas produced new evidence suggesting Priya had fled the country through Montreal. Weston knew he should have felt relieved. He did not.
*Ask who benefits if I disappear.*
One night, Weston accessed the original bank files without informing Silas. The exported records differed from those in the envelope. The payment batches contained eight transactions, not nine.
Priya had been right.