The moment the car threw her through the air, Elena had only one thought: *Finally. A reason good enough to see my husband.*
But even after she woke up in the emergency room of a private clinic with twelve stitches in her temple, Dante, the head of the De Luca family, still hadn’t come.
Elena called his encrypted number. She heard the sound of a running shower, and then Bianca’s breathy laugh.
“Dante’s in the shower… Oh, wait. He’s handling Family business.”
“The clinic called about a car accident? You sounded fine, so I told him it wasn’t urgent.”
“You’re not actually going to cry, are you? I’ll be sure to remind him once he’s out.”
Elena’s nails dug into her palm, her grip tightening on the phone.
She thought of her birthday, when Dante had shut down an entire stretch of coastline to celebrate Bianca’s new role as liaison between their two families. Bianca had even put a birthday hat on her hunting dog. The next day, the tabloids ran with it: *Dante Throws Lavish Fireworks Display for Dog’s First Birthday.*
She thought of the night her appendix had ruptured. It was three in the morning, and she’d driven herself to the clinic alone. Dante never answered his phone. A thunderstorm had knocked out surveillance in the harbor district, so he’d stayed at an ally’s safe house to oversee Bianca’s security himself.
It wasn’t as if she’d never asked him about it.
Every time, Dante said the same thing. “I grew up with Bianca. She’s in charge of secure communications now. Don’t make this sordid.”
Five years of marriage. Five years of making excuses for his coldness.
It wasn’t that he lacked warmth.
He just refused to give any of it to her.
Elena walked to the nurses’ station, retrieved her phone, and typed a message.
[I’m at the clinic. I’m terminating the pregnancy.]
A long time passed before the screen finally lit up.
One word.
[Received.]
A child would mean their name in the De Luca family records, binding them both forever to a system where a wife’s emergency calls could be screened and ignored.
Elena stared at the word on her screen and signed the consent form for the procedure.
He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 23 “Why did you tell him I went to the clinic, but not *why* I was there?” Elena’s voice was quiet, but each word landed like a hammer blow. “Why did you have someone call me to the club, then announce in front of all
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 22 When Elena didn’t respond, Bianca pressed on, her voice rising. “And what happened between you and Dante? He’s been acting like a crazy person, searching for you everywhere. He’s torn apart every underground network in Chicago.” “Why are you in Los Angeles? I went
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 21 She was testing him. She had deliberately painted herself in the worst possible light to see if he, too, would treat the lost child as a stain on her character. But she still couldn’t read him. With a single word, Luca could silence an
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 20 The sun was bright. Luca hadn’t gone to the harbor. Instead, he drove Elena to Santa Monica Beach in an olive-green Jeep. They sat at a restaurant overlooking the water. In front of Elena was a cup of black tea. The silver spoon chimed
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 19 She had even suspected that Luca simply wanted a front-row seat to Dante’s downfall. Perhaps he wanted to witness firsthand how the head of the De Luca family neglected his wife, then use that failure as a weapon at the negotiating table. But in
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 18 A month later. Elena found herself thinking about the past less and less. The nightmares had dwindled from every night to only once in a while. And when she woke, she no longer felt that bone-deep chill. In that month, Luca had quietly attended
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 17 Elena remembered all the times she had wanted to have a real conversation with Dante. But each time, the words would rise in her throat, only to be swallowed back down. She was afraid of disturbing him, afraid of sounding like a demanding wife
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 16 Elena couldn’t sleep. Fragments of memory kept surfacing, sharp as glass. She remembered calling Dante, only to be told by Bianca, time and again, that he was in a meeting. She would ask Bianca to tell him the weather had turned cold, that she’d
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 15 Los Angeles. An unfamiliar cityscape stretched out beyond the window. A sea breeze drifted through the open crack, stirring the white curtains. Elena woke from a nightmare, her back soaked in cold sweat. In the dream, she was back at that long table. Her
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He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 14 Dante pressed a hand to the edge of the heavy oak desk. “Who witnessed it?” The old man did not answer. “The committee does not reveal a departing member’s new protector to their former Family. The rule exists to prevent a Don from using
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