Chapter Six – The Falcon and the Wolf

Lucian Moretti – POV 

The vault door sealed with a hiss of pressurized air and the final, definitive thud of titanium bolts. Celeste Vellaro’s journal was now entombed within a chamber designed to withstand artillery fire. It was safe. It was mine. 

But it was useless without its key. 

I stood in the silence of my study, the ghost of Gloria’s desperation still clinging to the air. Her story was a sordid little tale of misery, one I’d heard variations of my entire life. Weak men preying on those weaker. But this one… this one had threads that led directly to power. To a legacy my family had once coveted. 

The intercom on my desk buzzed, a soft, intrusive hum.

“Sir,”Matteo’s voice emerged, filtered through the speaker. “The woman is settled. The doctor stitched her up. She’s asking—insisting, really—on when you’ll move for the girl.” 

I didn’t answer immediately. My gaze was fixed on the rain beginning to streak the bulletproof glass of the window. It painted the world outside in blurred, gray tears. A fitting backdrop. 

“Tell her she’ll be informed when I have something to inform her of,” I said, my voice flat. “Her role is now to wait.” 

“Understood.” 

I released the button, cutting the connection. Gloria’s maternal anxiety was a distraction. A understandable one, but a distraction nonetheless. This was no longer a rescue mission. It was an acquisition. 

Seraphina Vellaro. 

The name was a whisper in the underworld, a punchline to a joke about Danta’s incompetence. The blind daughter. The broken heir. A non-entity. 

But Gloria’s account painted a different picture. Not of a broken girl, but of a contained one. A girl who had learned to map her prison by sound and scent, who endured not with screams, but with a silence that, according to the old woman, was more terrifying than any outburst. A girl who was her mother’s daughter. 

You see with your soul. 

Celeste’s words, whispered through Gloria, echoed in the sterile quiet of my mind. Sentimental nonsense. And yet… it hinted at a mind not defeated. A mind that could be useful. 

The door opened without a knock. Only one person had that particular brand of audacity. 

Razo Marcello filled the doorway, his bulk a stark contrast to the refined lines of the study. He wore a leather jacket smelling of gun oil and the cold night air. His eyes, sharp and perpetually skeptical, scanned the room before landing on me. 

“Heard we have a guest,” he grunted, stepping inside and letting the door swing shut. “A Vellaro pet. You planning to start a zoo, Lucian? First your dads wild animals, now this?” 

“Her name is Gloria. She was Celeste’s,” I replied, turning from the window. “She brought a gift.” 

Razo’s eyebrows frowned. "What?" 

“The journal” 

A low whistle escaped his lips. He ran a hand over his cropped hair. “Fuck. Is it real?” 

“It’s real. Coded in blood, just like the stories said.” 

“And you believe her? The servant?” He leaned against the bookshelf on the left side of my study, arms crossed. “This stinks of a setup. Danta’s not smart, but he’s cunning like a rat. Sends his old nanny here with a shiny treasure, lures you in, and ambushes you when you go for the girl.” 

“I’ve considered that.” I moved to my desk, picking up a heavy, obsidian paperweight. It was cool and smooth in my hand. “But the fear on that woman was real. The blood was real. And the strategic value is too significant to ignore.” 

“So what’s the play?” Razo asked, his gaze narrowing. “We decrypt the book, find Celeste’s vaults, and cut Danta out?” 

“The book is a lock,” I said, setting the paperweight down with a quiet thud. “Seraphina Vellaro is the key. Gloria claims only she can decipher the code. It’s tied to her bloodline, her… sensory memory.” 

Razo barked a short, humorless laugh. “The blind girl? You’re going to trust the fate of a potential empire to a traumatized child who can’t even see it?” 

“I don’t trust anyone,” I reminded him coldly. “I use what is available. And she is now available.” 

I could see the gears turning in his head, the suspicion warring with his ingrained loyalty. Razo was a blunt instrument, but he was my blunt instrument. He saw threats in shadows, which was why he was still alive. 

“This is a complication we don’t need,” he stated finally. “With the Velenti alliance on the table, your father breathing down your neck… bringing a Vellaro heir into this house is like throwing a lit match into a room full of gasoline.” 

“Then it’s a good thing we control the fire department,” I said, a thin, predatory smile touching my lips. “Danta is a brute, but he’s also a coward. He hides his prize in a decaying estate with a skeleton crew because he’s afraid of anyone knowing she exists. He’s afraid of the symbol she represents.” 

“And what are you going to do with this… symbol?” 

My smile faded. The answer was simple, and it had been forming since Gloria knelt on my floor. It wasn’t about saving a damsel. It wasn’t about justice. It was about the raw, primal pull of something valuable that someone else thought they owned. 

“I’m going to take her,” I said, my voice dropping to a near-whisper. “I’m going to walk into Danta’s house, and I’m going to take what he believes is his. And I’m going to make him watch.” 

The obsession wasn’t with the girl. It was with the act of possession itself. The ultimate defiance of a man I despised. She was the physical manifestation of his failure, and I would claim her just as I had claimed the journal. 

Razo studied me for a long moment, reading the intent in my eyes. He saw the darkness there, the one that even death shivered at. He finally nodded, a grim acceptance on his face. 

“When do we leave?” 

“Tonight,” I said, turning back to the window. The rain was falling harder now, sheeting down the glass. “Tell Matteo to prepare a team. Small. Quiet. I want to be in and out before Danta even knows his cage is empty.” 

“And the girl?” Razo asked, pausing at the door. “What do we do when we have her?” 

I watched the storm lash the world outside, a world of violence and shadows that I commanded. 

“We bring her here,” I said, the words final. “And we see if the falcon her mother spoke of can still fly.” 

Or if she would break in my gilded cage, just like all the rest.