88The day I went to the hospital to discuss ending my pregnancy, the doctor lowered her mask and I realized she was my husband’s younger sister. Hours later, I filed for divorce from one of Chicago’s most feared men, and by nightfall, I was packing my life into a suitcase while the woman everyone thought he should have married laughed downstairs.

Luke stayed on his knees before me, accepting my words like physical blows, making no attempt to defend himself.

"I spent three years waiting for you to look at me the way you looked at Vanessa at the River Club!" I sobbed, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "I spent three years listening to your mother tell me I was nothing, that I was a temporary fixture until the right girl came along! And you never once stood up for me! You never once held my hand in public! You treated me like an administrative arrangement!"

"Sophia..." Luke whispered, reaching out to grasp my cold fingers, his grip tight and desperate. "Vanessa is nothing to me. Her father owed three million dollars to a rival crew in Detroit. I met her at the River Club to finalize the buyout of her father's debt so they would leave the city for good! I poured her wine because I was securing a business deal!"

"And what about your mother?!" I demanded. "She was in our house yesterday, laughing with Vanessa, telling me I would never be a real Morgan!"

Luke's jaw tightened with cold, terrifying rage. "My mother will never set foot in our home again. I swear that to you on my father's grave."

He looked up at me, his dark eyes burning with an intense, desperate light that frightened me with its sheer magnitude.

"I didn't know how to love you properly, Sophia," Luke confessed, his voice trembling violently. "My father was murdered when I was sixteen. I spent my entire life learning how to be cold, how to build walls, how to make sure no one could ever use the people I cared about against me. I thought if I kept you distant, if I kept you separate from my world, you would be safe!"

He leaned closer, resting his cheek gently against my hands.

"I was a fool," he whispered. "I was an arrogant, blind fool who almost lost the only pure thing in my life. Please, Sophia... don't leave me. Kill me, hate me, strip me of every dollar I own... but don't take my child and walk away."

Before I could answer, a sharp, sudden pain shot through my lower abdomen—a white-hot, searing cramp that made me gasp out loud, my eyes rolling back as the strength drained from my body.

"Sophia?!" Luke screamed, catching me as my upper body collapsed forward against his chest.

"Luke..." I gasped, clutching his lapels as a cold sweat broke out across my forehead. "The baby... it hurts..."