Walking With His Fiancée, the Mafia Boss Saw the Woman He Thought Had Died—Now Pregnant Spotlight8

Grant found Monica the following afternoon.

He needed one night to arrange what he would say. But by morning, he realized there was no way to arrange it.

There was no way to tell a woman that a wedding three weeks away wouldn’t happen and make the sentence sound gentle.

So he decided to say it plainly. That was the only thing he could still give her.

He found Monica in the back garden of the mansion. She was sitting on a stone bench beneath the old oak tree, alone—not reading a book, not holding her phone, not doing anything. Her hands rested on her lap, her eyes fixed straight ahead toward the bougainvillea hedge at the end of the garden.

Grant knew she was waiting because she was sitting in the exact place where he would find her first, and because she wasn’t surprised at all when she heard his footsteps on the gravel.

Maybe she had been waiting since the afternoon before—from the moment he told her to go home first on Brotton Street.

Maybe she had been waiting much longer than that.

Grant sat down at the other end of the stone bench. Between them was enough empty space for one more person to sit. He didn’t touch her, didn’t look over. He looked straight ahead toward the bougainvillea hedge and spoke.

He said there was a woman. She had once worked in the Holloway family sewing workshop. Five months ago, he had been told she had died. But she hadn’t died. She was alive. And she was carrying his child.

After he finished speaking, he went silent. He didn’t explain further. Didn’t apologize. Didn’t say I didn’t know or I only just found out or any other sentence meant to soften the blow he had just delivered.

He had thought about those sentences all night, and he had thrown them all away because each one sounded like an excuse, and Monica Langford didn’t deserve excuses.

She deserved the truth.

Monica said nothing.

One minute. Two minutes.

She sat still, both hands still resting on her lap, her eyes still looking straight ahead. She didn’t turn to look at Grant. She didn’t cry. She didn’t ask, “Who is she?” or “Since when?” or “Do you love her?”

Those were questions for women who had been caught by surprise.

Monica hadn’t been surprised. She had known.

Maybe she hadn’t known the details, hadn’t known the name, hadn’t known about the seamstress or the fake death certificate. But she knew there was something buried at the bottom of this relationship—something everyone around her knew, but no one said. And she had chosen not to ask.

Monica stood. She stood slowly, without rushing, as though she had known she would stand from the moment she sat down.

She walked toward the back door leading into the house, her steps even on the gravel path.

At the door, she stopped. Her hand closed around the doorknob, but she didn’t open it yet. She stood there with her back turned to Grant and spoke:

“I knew from the day my mother wrote to me. She wrote, ‘Don’t ask, my daughter. The people older than you have already handled it.’ I read that letter twice. Then I burned it in the sink. Then I put on a dress, went to dinner with you, and smiled.”

She paused for one beat. Her back was still turned. Her voice didn’t shake, but her breathing changed—slowing slightly, like someone holding something very heavy in her chest and having to control each breath so it wouldn’t fall out.

“I chose not to ask. Not because I was a coward. Because I thought if I was perfect enough, you would forget her. If I was beautiful enough, smart enough, skilled enough at appearing beside you—you would never need to look anywhere else. That wasn’t cowardice, Holloway. That was arrogance.”

She paused.

“And arrogance hurts far more than cowardice. Because with cowardice, you still know where you went wrong. With arrogance, you trick yourself into believing you’re right until everything collapses.”

She opened the door, stepped inside, closed it behind her gently. She didn’t slam it, didn’t turn back to look.

The soft sound of the door closing was like someone setting a book down on a table after finishing the final page.

Grant remained on the stone bench alone, looking at the closed door.

He didn’t get up and follow her. He didn’t call her name—because she didn’t need him to chase after her, and he knew that.

One week later, Grant received a small package delivered to the mansion—a white paper box, no sender’s name, no letter, not a single written line inside.

Only the engagement ring, resting on a piece of black lining cloth.

He picked up the ring, held it in his palm for a while, then placed it in a drawer.

Not the locked drawer. An ordinary drawer.