A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 05

A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 05

Marcello’s POV

I found out Audrey was dead while I was watching Valeria try on wedding dresses.

Enzo’s voice came through the phone.

“Don. Miss Lane just suffered a cerebral hemorrhage inside the prison. She’s dead.”

The whiskey glass in my hand shattered on the floor.

Every head in the bridal salon turned.

“What did you just say?”

Enzo paused.

“The prison doctor confirmed it. Her body is being transported to the medical examiner’s office.”

I don’t remember leaving the salon. The speedometer kept climbing. The only thing in my head was Audrey’s

eyes-the last way she looked at me.

In that visitation room, she’d cursed me through the glass. She said she’d haunt me from the grave.

She was just angry. She wasn’t really dead. She had to be lying again.

I burst into the morgue thirty minutes later.

A woman lay on the steel table, a white sheet pulled over her body.

The wrist sticking out was so thin it was barely more than bone, ringed with raw abrasions from the

handcuffs.

I walked over and pulled the sheet back. Audrey lay still. Her face was so swollen it was hard to recognize.

Dried blood crusted her temple, her lips, her nostrils.

“Audrey.”

I stared down at her.

“What kind of game is this? Get up. Stop faking.”

She didn’t answer.

grabbed her hand. It was stiff and ice-cold.

I snatched my hand back.

“No. This isn’t possible. She was fine this morning.”

The medical examiner stood off to the side and handed me a report.

“Mr. Ravello.”

“She had brain cancer. By the time they found it, it was already terminal.”

“Malnutrition, multiple injuries from physical abuse, and extreme emotional stress-those are what caused

the hemorrhage.”

My hands started shaking. “Brain cancer? She never told me she had brain cancer.”

The examiner looked at me. “She did tell you she needed a million dollars.”

Stapled to the back of the report was the treatment notice from St. Agnes Medical Center. Experimental

treatment cost: one million dollars.

Audrey hadn’t wanted money to leave me. She’d just wanted to stay alive.

And I’d given her a briefcase full of vouchers she couldn’t use to pay a hospital.

I’d frozen her bank cards. I’d ripped away her last treatment slot.

“There’s more.”

The examiner’s voice pulled my head up.

“There’s one more thing. She was pregnant. Ten weeks along. Given how weak she was, and the hemorrhage… we couldn’t save the baby.”

All sound drained from the room. “Say that again.”

“Miss Lane was pregnant. Approximately ten weeks.”

I stumbled back a step.

Ten weeks ago was my birthday. I’d gotten drunk that night. Audrey asked if I wanted to use protection, and I

pinned her hands above her head and told her she’d be fine.

Later, she threw up at breakfast. She’d rested a hand over her stomach without thinking. I’d convinced myself

it was all another act.

I hadn’t just killed Audrey. I’d killed my own child.

The morgue doors swung open. Valeria swept in. She took one look at Audrey’s body on the table and covered her nose in disgust.

“Finally. The thieving bitch is dead. About time.”

I turned my head slowly and looked at her. “You knew she was sick, didn’t you?”

Valeria’s face flickered. “How would I know that?”

“During the visit. Did you push her on purpose?”

“Marcello, calm down.”

I lunged and wrapped my hands around her throat, slamming her against the wall. “Answer me!”

She clawed at my arms, her face turning purple. Her bodyguards had to pull me off.

I didn’t fight them. I didn’t go after her again. I didn’t have anything left.

I dropped to my knees beside the steel table and gathered Audrey’s stiff body into my arms.

For five years, she’d always been warm and soft. Every time I came back to the estate late at night, she’d curl

into me without being asked.

Now, no matter how hard I held her, she wouldn’t respond.

“Audrey. Please. I was wrong. Just open your eyes. Look at me, please-”

“You want the money? It’s yours. The wedding-I’ll cancel it. I’ll marry you. Our baby. Our baby will inherit

everything. Just please, please wake up.”

No one answered. That was when I finally understood. The things Audrey had wanted-I could have given

them to her all along. I’d simply chosen not to.

Now I was finally willing, and she no longer needed any of it.