Chapter 22 Child of Lies.

Chapter 22 Child of Lies.
Aria's POV.
The boat to Marseille cut through dark water with engines humming beneath our feet. I stood at the railing, staring at the French coastline disappearing behind us, with one hand pressed unconsciously to my stomach.
Thinking about the just-informed pregnancy. The word kept echoing in my mind and refused to settle into anything resembling reality.
"You should sit down." Enzo appeared beside me, his voice careful. "Rest while you can."
"Don't..." I didn't look at him. "Don't pretend to care about my health when you've been lying to me for weeks."
"I haven't lied..." "You knew." I spun to face him, fury finally breaking through the shock. "You knew Luca drugged me that night. Also, you knew what he might have done to me while I was unconscious and you said nothing."
His jaw tightened. "I suspected. I didn't know for certain." "Suspected was enough!" My voice rose and I saw Marco and Lucia turn toward us from across the deck. I lowered my voice to a hiss. "You should have told me. I had a right to know."
"What would you have done differently?" His eyes were hard. "Would you have fought less? Survived less? Or would you have broken down, become a liability?" "That wasn't your decision to make!"
"Every decision I carefully make is about keeping you alive," he shot back. "Including the ones you hate me for." "You kept me ignorant and vulnerable." I stepped closer, getting in his face despite the height difference. "You used me as bait without my knowledge, fed false information through me, and now I find out I might be carrying a child conceived during..." My voice cracked. "During something I can't even remember. Something that was done to me while I was drugged and helpless."
The word hung between us that rape. We both knew it, even if I couldn't quite say it aloud. "If Luca touched you that night," Enzo said, his voice dropping to something lethal, "I will make him suffer in ways that redefine the word pain."
"That doesn't change what you did. What you kept away from me." "No," he admitted. "It doesn't." "Boss," Dahlia called from the cabin doorway. "We're getting close to the marina. Need to discuss next steps."
Enzo didn't move, but his eyes were still locked on mine. "This conversation isn't over."
"No," I agreed coldly. "It's not." We gathered in the cabin; the five of us squeezed around a small table covered in maps and documents Dahlia had somehow acquired.
She spread out several files, her expression grim.
"I've been tracking Luca's movements," she said. "He's in Paris now, holed up in a private estate in the 16th arrondissement with heavy security, but not impenetrable."
"That's where my mother is?" I asked. "Probably. But there's something else." She pulled out another document, this one stamped with a medical laboratory's logo. "I hacked into Luca's private server. Found this buried in encrypted files."
I grabbed it and scanned the pages. Medical terminology I barely understood, but certain words jumped out: DNA analysis, paternity testing and sample collection dates.
"He already knows," I breathed. "Whether the child is his or not, he already tested for it." "Which means he has your DNA on file," Lucia said. "And possibly samples from that night."
"Where was the test done?" Enzo demanded. Dahlia pointed to an address on the document. "Private lab in the 8th arrondissement. GeneTech Solutions. They specialize in discreet testing for wealthy clients."
"We go there," I said immediately. "We find out the truth." "It could be a trap," Marco warned. "Everything's a trap," I shot back. "But I'm not walking into Paris without knowing if I'm actually pregnant and if so, whose child it is."
Enzo studied me for a long moment. "Agreed. Marco and Lucia, you two will scout the lab. Find us a way in that doesn't involve a firefight. Dahlia, keep monitoring Luca's communications. If he moves, I want to know immediately."
"What about us?" I asked. "We get supplies and weapons and prepare for the lab raid." His expression was unreadable. "And we finish our conversation."
The others dispersed, leaving Enzo and me alone in the cabin. The boat rocked gently beneath us, a peaceful motion that felt obscene given the violence swirling around us.
"I need to know everything," I said quietly. "From now on, no more secrets, no more personal calculated omissions and everything."
He sat, gesturing for me to do the same. After a moment's hesitation, I did.
"The night your father gave you to Luca," he began, "before the trade was finalized, you were gone for approximately four hours. Your father claimed you were having dinner with Luca, establishing rapport before the engagement."
"I remember the dinner starting," I said. "Wine and a conversation about nothing important. Then... nothing. I woke up in my room the next few hours feeling sick."
"Classic rohypnol symptoms," Enzo said. "The drug metabolizes quickly and leaves few traces, but by the time I carried you with me, there was nothing to test for."
"But you suspected." "I suspected many things." His fingers drummed on the table. "Luca's reputation for... unconventional methods. Your disorientation. The timing, but suspicion isn't proof and telling you would have..."
"Made me a liability," I finished bitterly. "Your favorite phrase." "Made you question everything," he corrected. "Your memories, your body and your choices. I've seen what that kind of doubt does to people. It destroys them from the inside."
"So you decided to protect me by keeping me ignorant." "Yes." No apology in his voice. "And I'd make the same choice again." I wanted to hit him, wanted to scream, but underneath the fury was a terrible understanding. He wasn't entirely wrong. If I'd known weeks ago what I suspect now, would I have been able to function? To fight? Or to even survive?
"The test results," I said, changing tack. "If Luca already knows, why announce it publicly? Why tell every criminal network in Europe?"
"Control." Enzo leaned forward. "If you're pregnant with his child, you become valuable in ways that transcend our war.
Every family will want to use you, to forge alliances with Luca, to hold you hostage against him and to eliminate potential heirs. You become the most dangerous piece on the board."
"And if the child is yours?" His eyes darkened. "Then he's lying to throw us off balance. To make you doubt, to drive a wedge between us and to force us into making mistakes."
"Or," a new thought occurred to me, cold and horrible, "he's lying because there is no child at all. The pregnancy is fake, designed to manipulate me into doing something stupid."
Enzo's expression shifted with calculation and recognition. "That's... actually possible. We've been assuming Luca's telling the truth, but he's a pathological liar. What better way to control you than with a fictional pregnancy?"
"The lab," I said. "We need to see those test results. Real ones, not whatever Luca's fabricated for public consumption."
"Agreed. But Aria..." He caught my hand before I could stand. "If you are pregnant, regardless of paternity, that child is innocent in all of this. Whatever we decide about Luca, about your father and about this war, the child doesn't pay for our sins."
I looked at our joined hands, his larger one completely engulfing mine. "You say that now. But if it's his..." "Then it's also half yours," he interrupted. "Your blood, your DNA and your choice of what happens next."
The implications of that settled over me like a weighted blanket. My choice. In a world where I'd had precious few choices, where men had traded me like property and used my body as a weapon, the idea that I might actually have agency over something this fundamental was almost incomprehensible.
"I need air," I said, pulling away. I went back to the deck, gulping the salt-tinged wind. The sun was rising now, painting the horizon in shades of orange and gold that seemed too beautiful for the ugliness we were wading through.
Footsteps behind me. Dahlia. "Hey," she said softly, joining me at the railing. "Are you okay?"
"No." What was the point in lying? "Everything's falling apart. My mother's alive but captive. I might be pregnant. Luca's playing games I don't understand and Enzo..." I shook my head. "I don't know what Enzo is anymore."
"He's a man trying to keep you alive in a world designed to kill you both," Dahlia said. "That doesn't excuse his choices, but it explains them."
"You're defending him?"
"I'm explaining him to you." She turned to face me. "Aria, I've known Enzo for years. He's ruthless, calculating and sometimes cruel in his pragmatism. But he's also the most loyal person I've ever met.
Once he decides someone is his, he'll burn the world down to protect them." "Is that supposed to comfort me?"
"It's supposed to give you context." She pulled out her phone, swiping through something. "The lab results, if they exist and also if they're real, they might not be what you want to hear. Are you prepared for that?"
Was I? Prepared to learn I was carrying Luca's child and conceived in violence, I couldn't remember? Or prepared to learn the whole thing was a lie, another manipulation in an endless series?
"I have to know," I said. "The not knowing is worse than any truth could be."
"Okay." She pocketed the phone. "Then we hit the lab tonight. Marco and Lucia are already in position, mapping security patterns. We go in, get the files and get out. Clean and quiet." "And what if it's not clean?"
Her smile was sharp. "Then we improvise."