Escaping The Ruthless Don's Golden Cage

Maya POV

I woke up to the acrid sting of antiseptic and the rhythmic drone of a heart monitor.

*Beep... beep... beep.*

I was alive.

God, how I wished I wasn't.

"Maya?"

I forced my head to turn.

My mother was sitting in the chair next to the bed. She looked as though she had aged a decade in a single night.

Her face was pale, her lips drawn in a tight, bloodless line. She was holding my hand so tight it ached.

"Mom," I croaked. My throat felt like it had been scrubbed with glass.

"Don't speak," she said. Her voice trembled with suppressed rage. "The doctor... Maya, you lost the baby."

I stared at the sterile white ceiling tiles.

"I know," I whispered, the words scraping against my raw throat. "He pushed me."

My mother stood up abruptly.

She paced the small room like a caged tiger, her heels clicking sharply against the linoleum.

"I will kill him," she hissed. "I will burn his empire to the ground, brick by brick."

"No," I said.

My voice was stronger now. Hollow.

Cold.

"Sit down, Mom."

She looked at me, surprised by the steel in my tone.

"'Tears are a weakness,'" I quoted her own lesson back to her. "'Silence is power.'"

I sat up, wincing as the pain in my abdomen flared sharp and hot, but I ignored it.

"I don't want revenge," I said. "Revenge is messy. I want justice. I want him to have nothing."

"How?" she asked.

"I have the ledger," I said. "And I have the divorce papers ready."

My mother’s eyes widened.

"He will never let you go."

"He doesn't have a choice."

I spent three days in the hospital.

Liam didn't come.

Not once.

His lawyer sent flowers.

White lilies.

Funeral flowers.

I threw them in the trash without a second glance.

On the fourth day, I checked myself out.

I called Liam’s lawyer.

"I want a meeting," I said. "Today."

We met at a neutral law firm downtown.

Liam walked in twenty minutes late.

He looked tired. Disheveled.

Good.

He sat down opposite me.

He tried to reach for my hand.

I pulled it away as if his touch were corrosive.

"Maya," he started, putting on his mask of practiced contrition. "I am so sorry. The gala... it was an accident. I was trying to separate you two."

"You pushed me," I said flatly. "And you left me bleeding to save your whore."

He flinched.

"She's pregnant, Maya. I had to..."

"I was pregnant too," I said.

The room went dead silent.

Liam’s face drained of color.

"What?" he whispered.

"I was six weeks along," I said. "Your heir. You killed him."

He slumped back in his chair, looking as if he’d been physically struck.

"I... I didn't know."

"Because you never looked at me," I said.

I slid a manila envelope across the mahogany table.

"Sign the papers, Liam."

He looked down at the divorce decree.

His eyes hardened, the grief replaced instantly by possessiveness.

"No," he said. "We can fix this. I'll send Ava away. We can try again."

"There is no 'we'," I said.

"I won't sign," he growled. "You are a Ricci. You stay a Ricci."

I reached into my bag.

I pulled out a tablet.

I tapped the screen.

A photo appeared.

The ledger.

Page 42. The bribes to the port authority.

Liam froze.

I swiped.

Page 88. The money laundering through the casinos.

I swiped again.

The audio file of his conversation with Marc. *She's a prop. Damaged goods.*

Liam looked up at me.

There was genuine fear in his eyes now.

"Where did you get this?"

"Sign the papers," I said. "Or I send this to the FBI. And to the Rossi family. They won't like knowing you're skimming off the top of their joint venture."

He clenched his jaw.

His hands were shaking.

He grabbed the pen.

He signed his name with such force the tip tore through the paper.

"You're making a mistake," he spat. "You'll have nothing without me."

"I'll have my dignity," I said.

Suddenly, the door opened.

A slick lawyer in an ill-fitting suit walked in.

Ava's lawyer.

"My client instructs me to inform you," the lawyer smirked at me, "that Mr. Ricci's child—the *living* one—will be the sole heir. You are entitled to nothing."

It was a final slap in the face.

Liam looked embarrassed, but he didn't shut the lawyer up.

I stood up.

I felt light.

For the first time in four years, I could breathe.

"Keep the money," I said to Liam. "Keep the house. Keep the whore."

I looked him dead in the eye.

"I'm taking my name back."

I walked out of the conference room.

My mother was waiting in the lobby.

She hugged me.

"It's done," I said.

But as we walked out into the bright, blinding sunlight, I knew it wasn't over.

I touched the pocket where I kept the flash drive.

This was just the beginning.

I had signed the papers.

Now, I was going to burn the kingdom.

I took out my phone and dialed a number.

"Agent Miller?" I said when the line connected. "I have something you might be interested in."

Omertà was broken.

And the silence was about to get very loud.