The Billionaire Mafia Boss Brought His Starving Twins to a Grieving Mother, but the Milk She Thought Was a Curse Led Him to the Betrayal Inside His Own Home

Back inside the freezing master suite of the Black Pine estate, time had lost all meaning.

The temperature inside the mansion was dropping rapidly, hovering barely above freezing. Snow drifted through small cracks in the window seals. The only light came from three wax candles burning low on the nightstand and the dim, orange glow of the dying fire in the bedroom hearth.

Elena lay on the bed, her body drenched in cold sweat, clutching the bedsheets so tightly her knuckles were white.

A terrifying contraction ripped through her lower body—a pain so intense, so primal, that it dragged a ragged scream from her lips.

"Push, Elena! You have to push, sweet girl!" Margaret wept beside her. The old housekeeper’s hands were covered in towels, her voice shaking uncontrollably as she knelt between Elena’s knees. "I can see the head! The baby is coming now!"

"I can't..." Elena sobbed, her strength completely exhausted after four hours of unassisted, high-risk premature labor. "Margaret... I'm so cold... I can't feel my hands..."

"Yes, you can! You are a strong woman, Elena Voss!" Margaret shouted over the sound of the wind rattling the heavy glass windows. "Forget about that bastard who left you! Forget about this house! You bring your daughter into this world! Do it for her!"

Elena closed her eyes.

In the pitch-black darkness behind her eyelids, she saw Damian’s face—not the face of the cold mafia lord who had driven away into the storm, but the face of the man who had held her hand under the cherry blossoms four years ago, before his father’s dark empire consumed him entirely. She remembered how she had sworn to love him through better or worse.

He broke his vow, Elena thought, a sudden, blinding wave of fierce, motherly rage rising from the depths of her dying body. But I will not let my child die in his cold house.

With a final, shattering cry that ripped through the frozen mansion, Elena pulled herself up by the headboard and pushed with everything left in her soul.

A sharp, wet cry broke through the silence of the room.

A baby’s cry—thin, frail, but undeniably alive.

Margaret sobbed aloud, quickly wrapping the tiny, shivering newborn in a heated wool blanket she had saved near the hearth. "It's a girl! Elena, oh God, she’s so tiny... but she’s breathing! She’s breathing!"

Elena sank back onto the pillows, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Margaret gently laid the tiny bundle onto Elena’s bare chest.

The baby girl—weighing barely three pounds, born eight weeks early in a frozen room—instantly quieted, her tiny, red fist curling against Elena’s collarbone.

Elena looked down at her daughter. Tears of overwhelming, fiercely protective love spilled down her pale cheeks.

"Klara," Elena whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. "Your name is Klara."

Suddenly, Margaret’s face went white. She looked down at the bedsheets beneath Elena.

Blood.

A dark, terrifying torrent of hot blood was pooling across the white mattress, spreading rapidly beneath Elena’s hips.

"Oh no... no, no, no!" Margaret cried, pressing heavy towels against Elena’s abdomen with all her weight. "The placenta... you're hemorrhaging, Elena! Stay with me! Look at me!"

Elena felt a strange, merciful warmth washing over her body. The icy coldness of the room receded. The screaming wind outside grew distant, muffled, as if she were sinking beneath thick, quiet water. She looked down at tiny Klara resting peacefully on her chest, then closed her eyes.