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Chapter 41
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2025-06-06 00:40:56
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Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 45
It began with a letter.Neatly folded, sealed in black wax, no name on the outside.Seraphina found it slid beneath the door of her study in the east wing of the estate—where she kept records, training notes, and relics of her past she didn’t speak about. For a moment, she stared at the envelope, something ancient and cold curling around her spine.She opened it with shaking fingers.Inside was a photograph—one she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.Her mother.Smiling.Arms wrapped around Seraphina’s waist in the dressing room of a secondhand theater in Milan. That day. The final performance before the accident. The day she lost everything.But there was something different.A message scratched across the photo in a handwriting she didn’t recognize but somehow understood.“She knew they would betray you. And still, she stayed silent.”Seraphina dropped the photo.It fluttered to the hardwood floor, the corners trembling like wings.The room felt colder now.The same way it had when Luci
Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 44
The coordinates had leaked exactly as intended.A Marchesi safehouse—discreetly located in the industrial outskirts of Catania, formerly a supply hub—appeared to have been left exposed. The surveillance drones guarding it had gone dark three hours ago. Heat signatures inside the building were few and static, suggesting minimal presence. A perfect target.Don Leone Beretti Jr. watched the live-feed from inside his armored car, nodding slowly.“Begin.”His convoy surged forward—six SUVs, each loaded with Beretti soldiers and automatic firepower, flanked by a tactical support van designed to jam local comms.Tonight, he wouldn’t just retaliate.He’d erase a piece of Marchesi territory.He’d make Lucien bleed.But what Don Leone failed to consider—what all men failed to see when they confused violence with power—was that Lucien wanted him there.- - -Two days earlier, Lucien had stood in the Marchesi war room, looking over a digital rendering of the Catania hub.“It’s recognizable,” Anto
Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 43
The sea was calm.For once.But inside the Marchesi estate, the air was thick with tension. The calm before a different kind of storm.Lucien stood alone in the war room, the blue-tinted security monitors flickering across his face. Outside, the estate guards doubled their patrols. Inside, the windows were reinforced, supply lines checked, every contingency prepped for a siege.But Lucien wasn’t thinking about supply lines.He was thinking about Seraphina.And the way her voice trembled—just once—when she whispered, “You’re late.”She hadn’t spoken to him since the rescue.She stayed in the guest wing—not their bedroom—and declined meals, meetings, even company.Matteo had offered to speak with her. Anton volunteered to guard her door.Lucien said no to both.“She comes to me when she’s ready,” he said.But inside, he was unraveling by the hour.Seraphina stood on the balcony of her temporary suite, the ocean stretching wide and heartless in the distance. Salt stung the air. She hadn’
Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 42
The sky was a murky silver, the kind that made the Mediterranean shimmer like glass—and somewhere beneath that smooth, deceptive surface, something began to boil.Lucien woke with the chill of dread clinging to his skin.Seraphina’s side of the bed was empty.Not just empty—cold.He dressed in silence, movements automatic, his mind already calculating timelines, security routes, guard rotations. When he reached the greenhouse, it was empty. No guards at the usual station. The perimeter gate on the northeast wall showed a silent breach—clean, undetectable by the casual observer.But not by him.Matteo appeared, breathless. “She’s gone.”Lucien said nothing.Not at first.He simply turned toward the control room.They watched the security feed frame by frame.“Here,” Anton said, pointing. “That’s her. See the bag? She only takes that when she’s going out alone. She received a message on her burner—encrypted, routed through a blind signal we hadn’t flagged.”Lucien stared at the screen,
Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 41
The sun hadn’t yet risen when the walls of the Marchesi estate began whispering secrets.Matteo stood motionless in the east corridor, his body pressed into shadow, eyes fixed on the door of Guest Suite 4B. The room hadn’t been occupied in weeks—or so everyone believed. But now, at 3:41 a.m., the sensor blinked green. Motion detected. Door opened.Anton’s voice crackled softly in his earpiece. “Movement confirmed. Entry. One figure.”“Copy,” Matteo whispered, sliding his sidearm loose from its holster.He didn’t rush.He didn’t need to.This wasn’t about catching prey.This was about letting the rat believe it had found the cheese.Vincenzo stood in the server room, observing the access logs populating in real-time. His eyes tracked the digital fingerprints with clinical precision.“The guest wing’s signal matches the burner used to leak our vault routes to Adriana’s people,” he said. “They’re still using last quarter’s ghost protocol. Sloppy.”Lucien, standing at his side, was silent
Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire Chapter 40
The blinking red light on the server console was barely visible through the matte black housing of Matteo’s encrypted data vault—but once spotted, it might as well have been a siren.Anton crouched beside him, running the diagnostics with tight precision. Matteo didn’t speak. He didn’t curse. His silence said more than either of them wanted to admit.The breach wasn’t external.It came from inside the estate.“I’ve got three pings,” Anton said, voice clipped. “One at 03:14. One just before dawn. One twenty minutes ago. All accessing Level 3 files. Restricted logs on Lucien’s trade partners, Seraphina’s clearance movements, and internal safehouse inventories.”Matteo swore under his breath. “Someone’s trying to learn who Lucien trusts. And who he protects.”Anton’s eyes locked with his. “You think they’re targeting her?”Ma
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