Claimed By The Mafia Don (Ariella and Asher) novel Chapter 255

ASHER

I felt something inside me snap. It was sudden, like a cord pulled too tight. I was breathing heavily on that sofa, staring, unable to move my eyes away from Mrs. Costa as she spoke.

“Ariella was pregnant?” I asked, my voice sounding strange even to me.

My chest felt tight, my mind racing. Emotions clawed at my control, but I knew I had to steady myself. I had to hold it together.

“Yes,” she said, her tone bitter, almost resigned. “She was pregnant. Trying to get herself annihilated. Nobody would want to marry a pregnant woman with another man's child. She would have been done. That’s why we had to move the wedding forward.”

I froze. "The wedding… There was no wedding. I was supposed to marry her."

“No,” she continued, her voice sharp. “Your father knew the moment you found out that Ariella had been with someone else, that he was going to marry her. He knew you would drop her like hot liquid. But Ariella… she was stubborn.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I felt the weight of her words press down on me. “Do you know what I think?” she asked, her voice low and venomous.

“I think Ariella killed herself. She commited suicide. I don’t think that fire was an accident. I think she did it because she didn’t want to marry the most powerful man in the world. That stupid idiot. She should rot in hell. I’m sure she is burning in fire right now.”

Her words carried venom, her heart raw with grief and rage. I understood what she was saying, the bitterness, the sorrow, the blame, but none of that mattered to me in that moment. My mind was fixated on one undeniable truth: Ariella had been pregnant. And everything else, the fire, the marriage, the betrayal, it all spun around that single fact.

"Had my father ever been intimate with Ariella? Had they ever been close, alone, that pregnancy could still be his."

I glanced at Mrs. Costa, expecting a flicker of hesitation, but instead, she laughed, sharp and bitter, as if the thought itself were absurd.

“You do understand why I said Ariella killed herself, right?” she asked, shaking her head. “I believe it because she still hadn’t accepted the fact that she was going to marry your father. She called him an old man. She said she would never marry him. She looked disgusted just hearing his name. And my husband… for all his weaknesses, I don’t think he would ever have let the two of them be close like that, not without marriage.”

Her eyes glistened with sorrow as she continued. “I’m sure if Ariella had said no, her father wouldn’t have hesitated to help her escape, even if it meant his death.”

I let her words settle, the weight of them pressing down, but my mind stayed stubbornly fixed. Ariella was pregnant with my baby, and that was undeniable.

“Are you sure that pregnancy was mine?” I asked quietly, trying not to let my hope falter.

She laughed again, harshly, bitterly.

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