[COMPLETED] I Hid Our Baby From Chicago's Most Feared Mafia Boss—Then He Called My Doctor and Left Ginger Tea on My Desk

Miriam shut the door to the compliance office before she said anything else.

"I need you to tell me exactly what access you had at the gala."

I described the evening as carefully as I could. I had carried contracts to the Lakeshore Grand Hotel, adjusted the seating schedule, and left my laptop at the shared workstation in Bellano Tower before meeting Dominic downstairs. After Victor Raines confronted us in the hotel hallway, Dominic took me away. I hadn't returned to the office until the following morning.

"Your login credentials weren't used," Miriam said. "An old document template was copied and a separate administrator account attached your initials. That's different."

"Can you identify the administrator?"

"Not yet. But it's inside our systems."

She arranged for forensic copies to be made before anyone altered the files. I had watched enough legal documents cross my desk to understand why that mattered. If someone had used my name, we needed the original records, not everyone's memories of them.

Dominic arrived only after Miriam invited him. He listened while she explained the false approval, the Joliet warehouse amendment, and the temporary credential tied to its vendor address.

"Freeze that vendor's access," he said.

"We already did," Miriam replied. "And we've preserved the account data."

For once I was grateful that someone else in the room could meet his authority without flinching.

The warehouse document mattered because shipments moved through Joliet every week. If the wrong company received a routing amendment, goods could be redirected, records could be falsified, and responsibility could be placed on the person whose initials were attached.

Mine.

"Why would Victor care about a routing change?" I asked.

Dominic folded his arms. "We've refused his company's bid for storage access twice. This could be an attempt to force a breach and blame us."

"Or blame me," I said.

He looked at me. "Yes."

There was no comforting way to say it.

Miriam arranged for the company to notify outside counsel and the police that a suspected forgery had been discovered. She insisted that I not be required to interview alone with Bellano security. I had never appreciated her more.

During a break, I called Nora again. This time I told her the truth about the pregnancy.

She went quiet, then said, "Do you want congratulations, sympathy, or help making a plan?"

"All three, maybe."

"Then all three."

I laughed for the first time since the clinic. It was a small, unsteady sound, but it felt like mine.

I described the heartbeat, the ultrasound picture, and the fear that Dominic's world might touch our child. Nora didn't tell me what to do. She offered the same spare room, and she said she could accompany me to another appointment if I wanted someone there.

"You can tell the father without choosing to stay with him," she said. "Those aren't the same decision."

I wrote the sentence down after we hung up.

That evening, I met Dominic in a conference room rather than his private office. Glass walls gave me a sense of distance. Miriam remained available nearby.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

The words came out quietly. There was no prepared speech and no dramatic pause. I placed the ultrasound picture on the table between us.

Dominic stared at it, then at me.

"Nine weeks and three days at yesterday's appointment," I said. "It's yours."

He sat down very slowly. His watch touched the edge of the table, making a faint metallic sound.

"Penny."

"Don't promise me anything yet."

He looked at the photograph again. "I won't make promises I haven't thought through."

I had imagined disbelief, anger, or an offer of money. I hadn't imagined a man who looked as though he'd forgotten how to speak.

"Did you know before yesterday?" I asked.

"I suspected. Your nausea, the coffee, the way you held your stomach. But I didn't know. The clinic told me nothing."

"And your call?"

"I told them someone was trying to obtain your records. They took the warning. That was all."

I studied his face. I could believe he hadn't known for certain. I also believed he should never have approached the clinic without telling me.

"You crossed a line," I said.

"I did. I'm sorry."

He waited, allowing the apology to stand without demanding that I accept it.

"I was going to leave Chicago," I told him. "I still might."

"I'll support the child whether you live here, in Iowa, or somewhere else. You'll make your own decisions about where you feel safe."

"You cannot guarantee safety."

"No," he said. "I can't."

That answer was the first one that made me trust him a little.

We discussed practical things: medical appointments, privacy, whether his security people would know, and how we would communicate without making every conversation a meeting on the forty-third floor. He asked before touching the ultrasound picture. I gave it to him for a moment, then took it back.

He smiled once, briefly, with sadness behind it.

"I missed the first heartbeat," he said.

"You didn't know."

"I know."

He looked at my hands resting on the table. "If you'll let me, I'd like to be there next time."

"I'll think about it."

The next morning Miriam called with a development. The administrator account used to attach my initials had been authorized by a Bellano executive whose role included reviewing logistics vendors. A man named Adrian Vale.

Adrian had overseen the unsuccessful bids connected to Victor Raines. I had worked with him for years, corrected his documents, and trusted his routine requests.

Miriam's voice stayed level. "We've suspended his access. But before we did, the forensic team found a second attempted routing amendment. This one is scheduled to take effect tonight."