403 The Mafia Boss's Triplets Wouldn't Stop Crying—Until a Fired Waitress Whispered One Word That Brought Him to His Knees/ Chapter 1 / 9

Chapter 1 - The Woman in the Alley

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Elena did not hear the back door open again.

She heard only the babies.

Not their actual cries now, but the memory of them—the impossible harmony of three small voices forming the same word as though they had practiced it somewhere she could not reach.

Mama.

She pressed both hands over her mouth.

Fourteen months of grief rose through her at once.

The empty hospital room.

The signatures she had never remembered making.

The nurse who would not meet her eyes.

The social worker who had stood between Elena and the nursery door and told her there was nothing to see.

No viewing.

No photographs.

No ashes.

She had asked about ashes.

She remembered that now.

She had asked whether there would be anything to bury, and the social worker had rested one careful hand on her shoulder and told her the clinic would handle all remains according to the agreement.

The clinic.

Not the hospital.

Even then, some part of Elena had known something was wrong.

But her body had been full of medication, her mother had been dead six weeks, and grief had made every hallway look endless.

A shadow fell across the wet pavement.

Elena lowered her hands.

Caden Voss stood in the alley.

He had come alone.

That unsettled her more than if his men had surrounded him.

The diner’s kitchen light spilled through the open door behind him, framing his broad shoulders and leaving his face partly in darkness. He looked at her stripped apron on the ground, then at her red eyes.