A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 02

A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 02

The pain blew past anything I could endure. I blacked out fast. In that darkness, I fell back five years.

My father’s trucking company had just gone bankrupt.

His business partner vanished with the money, leaving behind ten million dollars in high-interest debt.

Debt collectors swarmed our house every day. They splashed paint, smashed windows, and shoved dead rats into my mother’s bedroom.

They beat my father so badly they broke his ribs. My mother nearly walked into the Chicago River more than once.

I was one step away from selling my own kidney on the black market when Marcello appeared. He had just taken over the Ravello family.

The youngest Don in Chicago. And the most lethal.

He tossed a contract in front of me. “I’ll clear your family’s debt.”

“In return, as of today, you belong to me. Every last part of you.”

He looked at me like I was something he was thinking about buying. But I had no other choice. I signed my name and pressed a bloody thumbprint onto the paper.

I became his kept woman at the Lake Forest estate. I gave up college. Lost every friend I had.

I spent five years studying which color shirts he wore, what temperature his coffee needed to be, what cigar he liked to smoke when he couldn’t sleep.

I weathered his violent mood swings and his near-pathological need for control.

Some nights, he’d pull me into his arms in the dark, stroke my hair, and tell me in the gentlest voice, “Audrey, you’re my sweet little bird.”

That twisted tenderness almost made me believe life would go on like that forever—quiet, uneventful, safe.

Until the headaches started. And the nosebleeds. Until a doctor put a piece of paper in my hands and said, “Terminal. Brain cancer.”

I took that paper to Crown and Ash to find him. Outside the VIP room, I heard Marcello raise his glass and announce to everyone, “Next month, I’m marrying Valeria Corvino.”

I stood outside the door and crushed the diagnosis into a ball.

The dream changed.

I was lying alone in a morgue now. A white sheet pulled over my body. No one there to claim me.

I woke with a gasp—and a slap cracked across my face.

My head snapped to the side. I opened my eyes. I was in the master bedroom of the estate.

Marcello sat on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, staring at me without expression.

“Awake now? Done with your little stunt?”

My head still throbbed with every heartbeat.

“I wasn’t faking anything.”

He let out a cold laugh and suddenly leaned forward. His fingers dug into my jaw.

“Passing out in the snow in the dead of winter—if that’s not a stunt, what is?”

“Audrey, you’d gamble with your own life just to squeeze money out of me?”

His grip tightened until I thought my jawbone would snap. “You think playing dead makes me feel sorry for you? I’ve seen this act too many times.”

I was too weak to fight back. “Let go of me.”

He released me abruptly, and his tone smoothed out. “Enough with the games. Say you’re sorry. And promise me you’ll behave.”

He stood, adjusting his cuffs. “If you behave, you can stay here after the wedding. You’ll still be my sweet little bird. No one will dare touch you.”

He said it like he was throwing scraps to a stray dog. I closed my eyes. I was hollowed out. Nothing left.