The Mafia Boss Froze Seeing His Heavily Pregnant Ex-Wife Working Alone at a Restaurant The private dining room at the Copper Lantern had been built so powerful men could speak without being overheard. Dark walnut walls. Heavy curtains. One locked door.

“Have somebody outside waiting.”

Delphine didn’t look up as the men scrambled to obey her. Her entire world was reduced to the rise and fall of Cora’s chest.

A sharp, shallow gasp broke the silence.

Then another.

Then, a ragged, high-pitched wheeze.

It was the most beautiful sound Del had ever heard.

“She’s breathing,” Sloan whispered, his voice cracking, shedding the ruthless armor of a mafia boss for a fraction of a second. “She’s actually breathing.”

“The epinephrine is opening her airway,” Del said, her voice strictly clinical. “But it wears off. The paramedics need to transport her immediately.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.

Del sat back on her heels, the adrenaline suddenly draining from her system. Her knees shook. She reached up to push a stray lock of auburn hair from her face, but her hand caught the edge of her hurried bun.

The hair tie snapped.

A cascade of long, dark waves tumbled over her shoulders. The cheap brown hair dye she’d been using for eight months had faded, revealing the distinct, rich raven color underneath.

Sloan’s head snapped toward her.

The sirens wailed closer, but inside the private dining room, time stopped.

Sloan wasn’t looking at Cora anymore. His steel-gray eyes, usually so cold and unreadable, widened in a shock so profound it looked like physical pain. He stared at Del’s hair. Then her face. The pale skin she had tried to smudge with cheap makeup. The green eyes she had hidden behind thick, fake glasses that were now slipping down her nose.

“Delphine?” he breathed.

Panic seized her.

No. No. Not yet.

Del scrambled backward. As she moved, her knee caught the edge of the heavy, oversized waitress apron she wore precisely to hide her secret.

The thick canvas fabric pulled tight against her body.

Sloan’s gaze dropped.

He saw it.

The unmistakable, heavy, eight-month curve of her stomach.

The breath punched out of him. “You’re…” He choked on the word. “You’re pregnant.”

Del didn’t answer. She grabbed the edge of a chair, pulling herself up. She had to run. She had survived eight months in the shadows, waiting for this baby to be born, hiding from the man who had put a price on her head.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, stumbling back.

Sloan rose slowly, like a man approaching a wild animal. “Delphine, you’ve been dead for eight months. The police found your car in the river. I buried an empty casket.” His eyes flicked to her stomach again, a dangerous, territorial fire igniting in his gaze. “Is that my child?”

“It’s none of your business,” Del snapped, backing toward the service doors.

“It is entirely my business!” Sloan roared, the volume shaking the expensive crystal on the tables. Bishop, his chief bodyguard, stepped forward to intercept her.

“Bishop, don’t touch her!” Sloan barked.

The paramedics burst through the main doors, flooding the room with medical equipment and loud voices. They swarmed Cora.

Del took the distraction. She turned to bolt through the kitchen.

But as she moved, her foot kicked Cora’s overturned purse. Something heavy and metallic slid across the polished hardwood floor, stopping dead at Del’s scuffed work shoes.

She froze.

It was a heavy silver locket. The clasp had popped open on impact.

Inside was a photograph of Delphine, taken on her wedding day.

But someone had taken a thick red marker and drawn a violent ‘X’ across her face.

Sloan stepped up behind her, looking down at the open locket. His breathing stopped.