Chapter 87 Chapter Eighty Seven

Chapter 87 Chapter Eighty Seven
Two days later
The hunger gnawed at her before the words even left her mouth. Ellie pressed a hand to her stomach, as if she could hold the emptiness in place, and looked up at the man who'd been posted nearest the door.

"Please, I need to eat. I'm hungry." Ellie pleaded with one of the guys. "Please."

"It's not yet time," he said in a gruff voice.

Not yet time. As if hunger kept a schedule. As if her body cared what these men had decided was appropriate.

"It's been two days!" she cried. "We've only taken water."

"Why are you complaining, Ellie? You should be grateful that you're still alive," Arya sneered.

Something in Ellie snapped taut. Grateful. She was supposed to be grateful for a concrete floor and stale water and a captor's idea of mercy.

Ellie glared at Arya. "I'm pregnant. Surely you can't expect me to let my baby starve. I'm not as heartless as you are," she spat acidly.

The words hung in the stale air longer than she meant them to. She hadn't planned to say it here, like this, as a weapon. But hunger did that — stripped away the careful control she usually kept around her secrets.

"You're pregnant?! Why didn't you say?" Rose gasped. "Congratulations. I'm going to be an aunt soon," she beamed.

Arya stared at Ellie, speechless. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe cry — because she knew she'd never set her sights on this one either, not unless Cesar forgave her, which was like... impossible.

"Congratulations, Ellie," she said.

"Thank you," she said stiffly, then looked back at the guy beseechingly. "Please."

"I'll see what I can do," he huffed. "No promises."

"Thank you." She'd take whatever she could get — but hopefully not poison. Hopefully these men had enough sense left in them not to hand a pregnant woman something that would do more harm than the hunger itself.

"How far along?" Rose asked.

"Two months... thereabout," she replied.

"Wow," Rose said. "I'm sure Cesar was ecstatic when you told him."

A small, aching smile tugged at Ellie's mouth despite everything. Cesar's face when she'd told him — that memory alone was worth holding onto in a place like this.

"Yeah, he was," she said. "I miss my family."

"Me too. I know Dad and Letty will be worried sick about us," Rose said. "It's not like they're going to keep us here forever, right?"

"I'm sure they just want quick cash," Arya said. "Once they get it... they'll let us go."

"Not a chance in hell, Arya." A voice rumbled.

The room seemed to still. Arya gasped when she saw Dante Silvestro, and she paled — the color draining from her face so fast that Ellie almost reached for her before remembering they weren't exactly friends.

"D... Dante?" she stammered.

"Hello, Arya," Dante smirked. "What are the odds?"

"Mom... you know him?" Rose grimaced.

"And you must be little Rosie." He smiled in her direction — an unhurried, unsettling smile, like he already knew things about her she hadn't told him.

"The name's Rosaura." She glowered at him.

"Whatever," he said dismissively, then looked at Ellie. "You must be... Elyon Sandoval, right?"

Ellie felt the weight of his gaze settle on her, assessing, cataloguing. He knows my name. Whoever he is, he already knows exactly who I am.

"You are...?" She arched her brow.

"Forgive my manners." Dante cleared his throat. "My name is Dante Silvestro."

"I have not seen you before, nor have I heard of you. What business could I possibly have had with you for you to kidnap me?" she questioned.

"Er... I'm not the one to answer that," Dante told her. "Cassandra Nash wants you dead."

Ellie paled.

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water — ripples of dread spreading outward before she could even process the shape of the threat.

"Moving on." He said and faced Arya. "I have every reason to believe that you know why you're here, don't you?"

Arya glared at him. "It's me you want, so let them go," she ordered.

Dante tutted and shook his head. "Things don't work out that way, my dear Arya." He held out his hand towards one of his men, and a gun was placed in his palm. "Senator Nash paid for you, and you've got to go, Elyon." He pointed the gun at her and cocked it. "Any last words?"

Everything narrowed to the black eye of that barrel. This is how it ends — not with Cesar beside her, not with the baby she hadn't even had the chance to hold.

"She's your son's wife!" Arya yelled at him.

Dante slowly turned his head to stare at Arya in shock. "What did you just say?"

"Cesari Sandoval is your son," Arya emphasized on the word son as she stared pointedly at him.

Dante dropped his hand, and the gun fell from his grip to the floor, and the bullet went off. Ellie and Rose screamed, but thankfully, it didn't hit any of them.

The silence that followed the gunshot felt louder than the shot itself. Dante stood frozen, his composure — the same cold, practiced composure he'd worn since he walked in — cracking for the first time.

"What are you talking about?" Dante asked.

Dante's shock hadn't yet faded, but Arya's own fury had been simmering for years, waiting for exactly this moment to boil over.

"It's exactly what you heard," Arya said. "You raped me, and I got pregnant."

The words tasted like acid on her tongue, but saying them out loud — finally, after all this time — felt like setting down a weight she'd carried alone for far too long.

"Remember? I looked for you. But your wife threw me out of your house, and as if that was not enough... she made sure I couldn't get any other job except to work at the strip club. You turned me into a prostitute." She wagged her finger at him.

He didn't even flinch. Of course he didn't. Men like Dante never had to live with the consequences of what they broke — they just walked away and let other people pick up the pieces.

"You made me hate my son because he looked like you!" Her voice cracked on the last word, the years of resentment she'd buried finally clawing their way to the surface. "Everything that happened to us was because of you!"

She'd rehearsed this moment in her head a thousand times over the years — in the dark of the club's dressing room, in the empty apartment after Cesar had grown old enough to ask questions she couldn't answer. 

She'd imagined saying these words to him, imagined the satisfaction of watching him understand what he'd done. But now that it was actually happening, there was no satisfaction in it at all. 

Only exhaustion. Only grief for the woman she might have been if he'd never touched her life.