Page 2 of Bound in Ruin

I need answers. I need a doctor who can't be bought by the DeLorenzo name, and I need to end this before it becomes a cage I can never break out of. Walking briskly into the shadows of the city, I don't look back.

I walk nearly a mile away from the house, slipping through the darkest corners of the neighborhood until I finally reach the main highway to flag down a taxi.

My husband, Luciano DeLorenzo, is a dangerous man whose reach spans the entire city, and his name carries a weight that terrifies everyone in his path. I cannot risk going anywhere near our usual medical circles.

Instead, I chose a tiny, struggling clinic on the absolute outskirts of the city that I stumbled across during a hidden internet search. It is small, rundown, and desperate enough for cash that I can maintain my anonymity—the kind of place where I can get away with things a major hospital would flag immediately.

As the taxi zooms down the empty roads, I rest my aching head against the cool glass of the window, watching the streetlights blur into long streaks of yellow. A cold wave of fear washes over me as I think about my life and how utterly terrifying this night is.

Stepping out into the dark like this seems like something my younger sister, Sienna, is more likely to do. She is the rebel of the family, the one who lets her heart run wild. I have always been the eldest, the dutiful daughter, the one who calculates every move to protect the others.

Yet here I am, running through the midnight shadows alone.

Eventually, the car slows to a crawl, pulling up to a dimly lit, unassuming concrete building. I pay the driver in cash, push the heavy car door open, and step down onto the pavement.

The air inside the clinic is thick with the sterile scent of cheap bleach, and the fluorescent lights hum a low, irritating buzz against the peeling wallpaper. It is exactly what I expected: small, poorly equipped, and desperately lacking the polished luxury of the private doctors people in my circle employ.

A nurse with tired eyes approaches me from behind a scratched laminate desk, sliding a clipboard forward. When she asks for my information, the lie leaves my lips without a single tremor.

"Amelia Williams," I tell her.

I have arranged every detail with agonizing care. I paid for the burner phone in cash, used an encrypted browser to find this place, and made sure no paper trail could ever link this midnight appointment back to Rosalia DeLorenzo.

Because I have made up my mind to take this pregnancy out of me. After ten years of being knocked around and physically punished by my wild beast of a husband, I will not give him the ultimate victory of turning my own body into a cage. It will not happen. For once, I will stand up for myself.

Within ten minutes, I am escorted to a cold examination room. The doctor, a balding man whose white coat has seen better days, looks at me with a quiet understanding that I am paying for his discretion as much as his medical advice.

Before he can even begin the ultrasound, I pull the small plastic bottle from my coat pocket and place it firmly on the metal tray between us.

"I need you to test these," I say, my voice tight. "I need to understand how this pregnancy happened. I’ve taken one of these at the exact same time every single day for years."

The doctor frowns, picking up the bottle. He unscrews the cap, tips a few of the tiny pink tablets into his gloved palm and walks over to a small cabinet where a basic chemical testing kit sits. The silence in the room stretches, suffocating me, until he finally turns back around with a grim expression.

"These aren't birth control, Ms. Williams," he says softly. "They’re standard over-the-counter vitamins. The coating has been dyed to match a generic contraceptive, but the active hormones are entirely absent."

The room tilts on its axis.

A cold, sickening wave of clarity hits me, knocking the breath right out of my lungs.

Luciano knew.

He knew I was secretly trying to prevent a pregnancy, and instead of confronting me, he chose a far more twisted punishment. He replaced my pills without a word, turning my own body against me and forcing me into the one future I had fought the hardest to avoid.

He wanted to chain me to his side forever, and he used my own biological clock to do it.

"I want it out," I say, my voice dropping to a harsh, lethal whisper.

I look at the doctor with an angry conviction that burns away the last trace of my shock and doubts. I will not carry Luciano's legacy. I will not let that monster win.

The doctor’s brow furrows, and he immediately steps back, shaking his head.

"Ms. Williams, I can't do that. It’s almost midnight, we don't have the standard intake paperwork, and performing an unscheduled procedure under these conditions poses severe liabilities for this clinic."

He is hiding behind medical jargon, but I know what he really means. He doesn't want the risk.

Without a word, I sink my hand deep into my coat pocket and pull out some of the thick wad of hundred-dollar bills I brought with me. I drop it onto the metal desk beside me with a heavy, deliberate thud.

The doctor looks down at the cash. In a struggling clinic like this, that amount of currency is enough to look the other way. He lets out a long, defeated sigh, his posture slumping as his ethical boundaries dissolve under the weight of the money.