"# **She Came Home Pregnant With Their Son’s Ultrasound—Then Found Her Husband Kissing Her Younger Sister**

By Thursday evening, the reality of Elena’s retaliation had begun to crush Giana Rossi.

She sat on a luggage trunk inside the lobby of her luxury apartment building on Dearborn Street, surrounded by four large designer suitcases. Two private security guards stood near the glass doors, holding a signed eviction order from Rossi Property Management.

Her credit cards had been declined at every restaurant in Gold Coast that afternoon. Her phone line had been cut, and her black Mercedes sports car—registered under the corporate fleet of Rossi Maritime—had been repossessed from the subterranean garage an hour ago.

Desperate and sobbing, Giana hailed a yellow cab, using the last fifty-dollar bill in her purse to pay the driver to take her to the Prudential Building.

She pushed past the receptionist on the twenty-eighth floor, bursting into Elena’s private office.

"Elena!" Giana cried, her voice high and breathless. "You can't do this to me! I'm your sister!"

Elena sat at a polished oak desk, reviewing shipping manifests with Arthur Pendelton. She didn't look up immediately. She finished signing her name at the bottom of a document, handed the pen to Arthur, and then slowly raised her eyes to look at Giana.

Giana looked hysterical. Her hair was messy, her designer clothes rumpled, and her mascara was smeared down her pale cheeks.

"I have nowhere to go!" Giana sobbed, taking a step toward the desk. "The guards wouldn't even let me back up to get my jewelry! You took my car! You froze my bank accounts! How could you be so heartless?!"

Elena rested her chin on her hand, watching her younger sister with a quiet, detached pity.

"When our mother died, Giana," Elena said softly, "I promised her I would take care of you. I paid for your school. I bought your first car. I gave you a thirty-thousand-dollar monthly allowance so you could pursue your 'art career' without ever worrying about rent."

"Then why are you treating me like an enemy?!" Giana yelled, tears streaming down her face.

"Because you slept with my husband in my home while I was pregnant with his child," Elena said flatly, her voice devoid of anger, which made the words cut twenty times deeper. "You didn't just break my heart, Giana. You tried to help him steal our father’s company."

"Luca told me you didn't care about the business!" Giana pleaded, taking another step forward, her hands clasped together. "He said you were tired, that you wanted to retire to the countryside after the baby was born! He said we were doing you a favor!"

"And you believed him," Elena said. "Because it was easier to believe his lies than to accept that you were nothing more than a convenient tool he used to get closer to our father’s secrets."

Giana froze, her lower lip trembling. "What... what do you mean?"

"Luca never loved you, Giana," Elena said quietly. "He used your passcodes to access my father’s personal safe in Door County three months ago. Once he had what he needed, he was planning to ship you off to an apartment in London while he declared me mentally unfit due to postpartum depression."

Elena pulled a sheet of paper from a folder and slid it across the desk.

It was an internal email from Luca to his private estate manager, dated three weeks ago:

Subject: Relocation of G. Rossi.

Ensure the lease on the Kensington flat is finalized by October. Transfer two hundred thousand dollars to her account as a final settlement. She is not to return to Chicago without my explicit authorization.

Giana read the paper, her body shaking violently as the full extent of Luca’s cold calculation hit her like a bucket of ice water.

"He... he was going to dump me?" Giana whispered, falling to her knees on the thick rug, clutching the paper against her chest.

"You traded your family for a man who viewed you as an administrative expense," Elena said, standing up from her chair. "Now, get up."

"Elena... please," Giana wept, looking up at her with big, terrified eyes. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

"I have arranged a small studio apartment for you in Peoria," Elena said, her voice remaining firm. "The rent is paid for six months. There is five hundred dollars a week credited to a grocery card. If you want anything more than that, you will get a job and earn it yourself."