Chapter 3 - THE MAFIA BOSS FOUND HIS FORMER MAID WORKING WHILE SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT WITH TWINS—BUT WHEN SHE REFUSED HIS MONEY AND CALLED HIM A STRANGER, HE REALIZED SOME MISTAKES COULDN'T BE FIXED WITH POWER
Dominic Gallo had faced armed men without his pulse changing. But the photograph on his phone made his hands feel unsteady. Layla stood beneath the bakery's striped awning, one hand braced against her lower back and the other curved over a belly that could no longer be hidden beneath her coat.
“She's pregnant,” he said when Matteo arrived.
Matteo examined the message without touching the phone. “The sender wants you to react.”
“She was sick when I fired her.”
“Possibly because she was pregnant.”
Dominic sat down hard. His mind returned to the shattered decanter, the way she had moved slowly, and the pleading in her voice when she asked to stay until morning. He had heard weakness and chosen to punish it.
“How far along?” he asked.
“From a photograph? I won't guess.”
Dominic looked at the silver bird locket lying on his desk. Three months before the dismissal, he had spent the night with the masked woman. Four months had passed since he fired Layla. The numbers assembled themselves with terrible clarity, but he refused to turn suspicion into certainty without hearing her speak.
“Who sent this?”
“Unknown number. We can ask the phone company through proper channels if there are threats. We can't assume she's safe just because the message reached us.”
“Celeste.”
“Maybe. But accusing her without evidence gives her a warning.”
Dominic rose. “I want a car.”
Matteo blocked the doorway, not physically threatening him but refusing to step aside. “You go there with six men, you terrify her. If she wanted to see you, she'd have called.”
“Someone is watching her.”
“Then we ask what help she wants. We don't replace one kind of control with another.”
Dominic stared at his oldest friend. Matteo had saved his life twice, and he had never spoken to him so plainly. Dominic realized how much courage it took to contradict him.
“Call Rosa,” he said. “Tell her about the photograph. Ask Layla if she'll meet me somewhere public.”
Rosa called Layla at seven the next morning. Layla sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing a cramp from her calf. She listened in silence as Rosa described the anonymous message.
“Someone took a picture of me?”
“Yes. Matteo thinks you're being watched.”
“By Dominic?”
“He says no.”
Layla did not know whether to believe him. She had spent months avoiding the Gallo name, but avoidance had not changed the fact that Dominic was the father of her children. She could not pretend forever that he had no right to know they existed. Yet the thought of him arriving with guards and lawyers made her chest tighten.
“I'll meet him,” she said at last. “At the bakery. June stays with me. No guards inside.”
Rosa repeated the conditions. Matteo accepted them immediately. Dominic agreed after a long pause, as though he were learning a language in which his wishes were not the final word.
Before the meeting, Layla went to her prenatal appointment. The doctor reviewed her scans and explained that both babies were growing, though one was smaller than the other. She needed closer monitoring and might have to deliver before her due date. Layla asked careful questions, wrote the answers in her notebook, and refused to let panic decide what she heard.
“You have support?” the doctor asked.
“I have friends.”
“That's a good start.”
Layla looked at the two grainy faces on the ultrasound screen. “They're girls,” she said softly, smiling despite everything. “Both of them.”
The technician handed her two new pictures. Layla slipped them into her folder. She had been thinking of names for weeks: Nora, after her mother, and Elise, after her father's sister. Two names that belonged to people who had loved her without conditions.
At three that afternoon, Dominic entered June's bakery alone. He wore a charcoal coat and no visible weapon. He had left his bodyguards across the street because Layla had insisted. The shop smelled of cinnamon, butter, and fresh coffee. A handwritten sign near the register announced that day-old bread was half price after four.
Layla stood behind the counter in a blue maternity sweater. She looked older than she had in the penthouse, not in years but in the careful steadiness of her expression. When she saw him, her hand moved to her belly. Dominic noticed and stopped several feet away.
“Layla.”
“Mr. Gallo.”
“Dominic,” he said, then immediately regretted it. He had no right to demand familiarity.
“June is in the kitchen,” she told him. “The door stays open.”
“Of course.”
He placed the silver bird locket on the counter between them. Layla stared at it. Her lips parted, and for a moment she looked like the woman he remembered from the library: unguarded, surprised, and painfully young.
“My mother's,” she whispered.
“I found it after the masquerade.”
She lifted her eyes. “So you know.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know when you fired me?”
“No.”
“Would it have mattered?”
The question struck harder than an accusation. Dominic could have said he would never have dismissed a woman he remembered so tenderly. But that answer would mean Layla had deserved kindness only because he had once desired her.
“It should not have mattered,” he said. “I should never have treated you that way, regardless of who you were.”
Layla picked up the locket and fastened it around her neck. Her fingers trembled slightly. “Thank you for bringing it.”
He looked at her stomach, then away. “May I ask you something personal?”
“You can ask. I don't have to answer.”
“Are the babies mine?”
The bakery seemed to grow silent. Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. June moved in the kitchen but did not enter.
“Yes,” Layla said.
Dominic gripped the back of a chair. “Babies?”
“Twins. Two girls.”
He looked at her, stunned. “You knew when I—”
“When you threw money at my feet? Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because Celeste was smiling, and you were angry, and I'd heard people talk about what happens when someone crosses the Gallo family. I was afraid you'd take them.”
“I would never—”
“You don't get to tell me what I should have been afraid of,” she interrupted. “I watched you order me into the snow. I knew what you could do when you decided someone didn't matter.”
Dominic lowered his gaze. “You're right.”
Layla had prepared for denial, fury, perhaps a demand for proof. She had not prepared for agreement. It made her eyes sting, and she hated that she still wanted him to be kind.
“I want to help,” he said.
“I have a job.”
“I know.”
“I have a doctor. I have a place to live.”
“I'm glad.”
“I don't need you to rescue me from the life you helped make harder.”
He accepted the words. “Then tell me what you do need.”
“Time. Space. No men following me. No decisions made about my daughters without me.”
“Done.”
“And I want the false accusations removed from my employment record.”
“They have been. I brought the written correction.” He set an envelope beside the locket's empty chain. “There's also back pay and severance. You can review it with anyone you trust.”
Layla left the envelope untouched. “I won't accept money as the price of silence.”
“It isn't.”
“Then you won't mind if a lawyer looks at it.”
“I'd prefer that.”
June emerged carrying two mugs of tea. She set one in front of Layla and stood beside her, arms crossed. “Everything all right?”
“Not everything,” Layla said. “But we're talking.”
June looked Dominic over with the practiced skepticism of a woman who had survived difficult men. “Then talk respectfully.”
“I intend to,” Dominic answered.
He sat only after Layla nodded toward a chair. They spoke for almost an hour. She told him about the prenatal clinic, her father's death, the bills, and the way Rosa had helped her after the dismissal. He told her about the locket, the staff footage, and the anonymous photograph. He did not mention the details of his criminal business, but he admitted that his world had made her fear reasonable.
“Celeste knows something,” Layla said. “She looked at me strangely the morning I was fired. Like she was waiting for me to say something.”
Dominic's expression darkened. “I will investigate.”
“Investigate legally,” she said. “I don't want someone hurt because of me.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He paused. “I'm trying to.”
For the first time, Layla saw a possibility that he might change. It was a small possibility, no larger than the space between two words. She did not confuse it with trust.
When Dominic left, he did not touch her. He asked whether she wanted a ride and accepted her refusal. He walked out alone, past the half-price bread sign, and stood on the sidewalk while cold air filled his lungs. He had learned he was going to be a father to two daughters. He had also learned that the mother of those daughters feared him more than she trusted him.
Matteo waited beside a parked car. “How did it go?”
Dominic stared at the bakery window. Layla was laughing softly at something June said, one hand resting on her stomach. He had not seen her laugh in four months.
“I found them,” he said. “And I have no idea how to deserve a place in their lives.”
Matteo opened the car door. “Start by keeping your promises.”
That evening, Dominic instructed his attorney, Mara Ellis, to prepare a voluntary paternity acknowledgment process that would respect Layla's consent and allow independent legal advice. Mara warned him that financial support and parental responsibility were separate from any hope of reconciliation.
“I don't want a document that gives me control over her,” Dominic said. “I want to do right by the children.”
“Then let her choose her own lawyer,” Mara replied. “And don't turn a family matter into a show of force.”
He agreed. He also ordered a thorough review of Celeste's access to household staff records. Matteo found that someone using a Rossi-linked account had requested Layla's old address and emergency contact details days before the anonymous photograph arrived. The discovery did not prove who had taken the picture, but it was enough to alarm them.
At the bakery, Layla told June and Rosa what had happened. Rosa listened with her hands wrapped around a mug. “How do you feel?”
“Relieved that he knows. Terrified that he knows.”
“Both can be true,” June said.
Layla unfolded the written correction to her employment record. It was signed by Dominic and Victor Hale. The accusation of substance abuse had been removed. The document stated that the dismissal had been mishandled and that Layla had been entitled to a safer departure. It was only paper, but paper could matter when a future employer asked why she had left.
“I didn't think he'd admit it,” Layla said.
“Admitting it is a start,” June replied. “Not the finish.”
Later, in her room, Layla opened the locket. Inside was a tiny photograph of her mother standing in front of a bakery long since demolished. Layla pressed it to her lips. “I wish you were here,” she whispered. “I could use your advice.”
The babies shifted. She smiled through her tears. “All right, Nora. All right, Elise. I hear you.”
Her phone rang. The number was blocked. She almost ignored it, but a cold instinct made her answer.
A woman's voice spoke without greeting. “You should have stayed invisible, Layla.”
Layla's blood chilled. “Who is this?”
“You've made a dangerous mistake telling Dominic about those children.”
The call ended. A second later, a photograph arrived on her phone. It showed the entrance to her prenatal clinic, taken that morning. Beneath it was a message:
THE GALLO HEIRS BELONG TO THE FAMILY.
Layla stood so quickly that pain tightened across her abdomen. She caught the edge of the dresser and breathed slowly until it eased. Then she called Rosa, followed by the clinic's emergency line to ask about the cramping. The nurse told her to come in for evaluation. June was at her door within ten minutes.
As they drove toward the hospital, Layla made one more call. Dominic answered on the first ring.
“Layla?”
“Someone is watching me,” she said. “They know about the girls. I have photographs and messages. I'm going to the hospital because I've had pain.”
For one terrible second, he said nothing.
Then his voice came back, steady and controlled. “I'm sorry. Are you with someone you trust?”
“June.”
“Good. Stay with her. I'll have Matteo contact the police about the threats. I won't send anyone to you unless you ask.”
Layla closed her eyes. She had expected him to command. Instead he asked, “Would you like me to come?”
She looked at June driving through the wet Chicago streets, at the hospital lights ahead, and at the two small lives she had fought so hard to protect.
“Yes,” she said. “But come alone.”
“I will.”
Dominic ended the call and reached for his coat. Before he could leave, Matteo appeared in the doorway holding a newly printed security report.
“Dominic,” he said quietly, “you need to see this before you go.”
On the page was a transfer authorization for Layla's medical information. It carried the signature of a woman who had no right to sign it.
May you like
Celeste Rossi.
And beneath her name, in a field marked REQUESTING PARTY, was a second signature Dominic recognized immediately: Enzo Rossi, the man who was supposed to become his father-in-law.
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