Chapter 3 - The Gathering StormBy noon, the atmosphere inside the Moretti mansion had curdled into something suffocating.
Isabella Romano sat in the sunroom, wearing a cream-colored designer dress, her phone clutched tightly in her manicured hand. She had tried calling her contact three times. Each call went straight to a dead tone.
The envelope was gone. She had checked beneath the desk an hour ago, intending to retrieve it before the cleaning staff reached that corner of the study, but it had vanished.
Did Aleandro find it? she thought, panic fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird. No. If he found it, the guards would already have locked the gates. He would have confronted me.
She stood up, smoothing her dress, and walked toward the study with practiced grace. She needed to find out how much he knew, and she needed to do it before her father’s associates made their move.
When she pushed open the heavy oak door, Aleandro was sitting behind his mahogany desk.
He was not reading ledgers. He was cleaning the slide of a matte-black nine-millimeter pistol with a lint-free cloth. The metallic scent of gun oil filled the room.
Isabella forced a bright, charming smile onto her lips, gliding across the Persian rug.
"Aleandro, darling," she said, resting her hand lightly on the edge of the desk. "You’ve been locked in here all morning. The wedding coordinator called twice about the flower arrangements for the terrace."
Aleandro did not look up immediately. He continued wiping the steel slide, his movements slow, rhythmic, and terrifyingly deliberate.
"Let the flowers die, Isabella," he said softly.
The smile faltered on her face. "What are you talking about?"
Aleandro finally raised his eyes. They were completely flat—dark pools of ice that stripped away every layer of pretense she had built over the last two years.
"I found the envelope," Aleandro said.
The room seemed to drop ten degrees. Isabella’s breath caught in her throat, her chest rising and falling rapidly as the color drained from her cheeks. For a microsecond, the mask of polished innocence fractured completely.
"Aleandro... I can explain," she stammered, taking a desperate step backward. "It’s not what you think! My father—he was being blackmailed by Valenti! They forced me to—"
"Your father died of a heart attack three years ago, Isabella," Aleandro interrupted, his voice a lethal whisper. "And Dominic Valenti does not blackmail amateur socialites unless they volunteer to sell their own house first."
She stared at him, realizing in that single heartbeat that the game was over. All her lies, her hidden phone calls, her late-night meetings in dark garages—they had all been dissected and laid bare.
May you like
Before she could turn toward the door, two armed guards stepped out from the shadows of the adjoining library, blocking her exit.
"You are going to sit in that chair," Aleandro said, gesturing to the leather seat opposite him. "And you are going to tell me every name, every code, and every drop of cargo Valenti has moved through my shipping lines over the past twelve months."
Related Stories
