Chapter 3

Three p.m.

According to the tracker, Riccardo hadn't gone to meet Dante after he left the estate.

His car had headed straight south and pulled into a private golf club on the coast.

The club was in Sophia's name.

I sent someone to pull the club's security footage. Then I sat down in front of the monitors in the war room and opened the dark-web monitoring dashboard.

Ten minutes earlier, the thirty-million-dollar listing had been updated with a new attachment.

The attachment detailed a brand-new backup escape route through a rail maintenance tunnel.

The price had gone up to 50 million.

And at the same time, an offshore shell account in Sophia's name had received a 20-million-dollar down payment.

The money came from our sworn enemies, the Guerra family.

A cold laugh escaped me.

Just then, there was another knock at the door.

It was Dante.

"Consigliere, Riccardo sent me to pick up the final escape plan."

Dante stood in front of the desk, looking serious.

I looked at the scar on his face.

In my last life, when his body was brought back to the estate, his chest had been riddled with bullet holes. His eyes were still wide open, as if he couldn't accept what had happened.

"Riccardo didn't give you the plan?" I asked coldly.

Dante looked confused for a second, then shook his head.

"No. Riccardo said he burned it by accident, and he told me to come get another copy straight from you."

It took me only seconds to understand what Riccardo was doing.

He'd destroyed the plan himself, then sent the man leading the hit to me for another copy.

That way, if the op went wrong, Dante's last words or the mission logs would point straight back to me.

I opened a drawer, took out an encrypted flash drive, and handed it to Dante.

"The op starts at nine tonight. The drive can't be decrypted until 8:55 pm."

"Remember, no matter what orders Riccardo gives over the radio, stick to the red route on the drive when you pull out."

Dante's face hardened. He took the drive and slipped it into an inside pocket.

"Consigliere, what's going on?"

I kept my voice completely level. "Dante, come back alive."

Shock flashed across Dante's face, but he didn't ask another question.

He gave me a firm salute, then turned and left.

Seven p.m. Two hours before the hit.

The great hall was brightly lit.

Riccardo came down the stairs in a crisp suit tailored for combat, but his face was deathly pale.

He clutched his lower-right abdomen as he staggered.

Sophia gasped and caught him as he stumbled. "Riccardo! What's wrong? You look awful!"

Cold sweat beaded on Riccardo's forehead. He looked like he could barely stand.

My father came out of his study with a deep frown.

Dr. Luca Conti, the family doctor, hurried over to examine him and pressed on his lower-right abdomen.

Riccardo let out a muffled groan and doubled over in pain.

"Don, it's acute appendicitis." Luca mopped his brow as he spoke. "He needs to get to a hospital for surgery right away. If it ruptures, it could kill him."

It was the exact same act.

It had played out the same way in my last life. A perfectly timed case of appendicitis had kept him away from the front.

I walked over and looked down at my fiancé, curled up on the rug.

"Acute appendicitis?"

I took a small glass vial out of my pocket. It was half full of a clear liquid.

"This is what you injected yourself with in the golf club bathroom this afternoon, isn't it?"

"A small dose of this can mimic the symptoms of appendicitis within three hours. Riccardo, you really went this far just to get out of tonight's operation."

The hall went dead silent.

My father's pupils contracted sharply as his gaze dropped to Riccardo on the floor.

Sophia's voice rose sharply. "Elowen! Have you lost your mind? Riccardo is in agony, and you're standing there making up lies to smear him!"

"You're hoping he dies so you can seize command for yourself!"

Riccardo lifted his head too, looking hurt and disappointed, as if I'd falsely accused him.

"Elowen... we grew up together..."

"I'm leading tonight. Why would I fake being sick now, of all times..."

The dozen or so senior family members in the hall began looking at me with disapproval.

"Consigliere, Riccardo has always been loyal to the family. How can you suspect him at a time like this?"

"Saving his life comes first. Get him to a hospital!"

My father looked at me calmly.

"Elowen. Proof."

Under the Cavallo code, making an accusation without proof was a grave offense—turning the family against itself.

I slid a tablet over to my father.

On the security footage, Riccardo walked into the club's bathroom and jabbed a needle into his own stomach.

Ten minutes later, he tossed the vial into the trash.

"This isn't medicine. It's a drug that mimics the symptoms of appendicitis. His fingerprints are on the vial."

I turned to Luca.

"You can draw his blood and run a rapid tox screen. It takes ten minutes. We can wait."

Luca looked at my father. When my father nodded, the doctor drew a blood sample and ran the test.

Ten minutes later, his expression darkened as he read the results.

"Don, there's definitely a drug in Riccardo's blood that shouldn't be there."

"It irritates the nerves in the abdomen and causes symptoms almost identical to those of acute appendicitis, but there's no real inflammation."