ログインThe kitchen smelled like cinnamon and regret.My mother sat across from me at a scarred wooden table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea she hadn't touched. Up close, the years had been cruel in ways that went beyond wrinkles. Her eyes had a hollowed-out look, the look of someone who'd been running so long she'd forgotten what she was running from. The flour on her fingers was from a pie crust she'd been crimping when I knocked. A pie crust. Like this was just another Tuesday night."You've been ten minutes away," I said again. The words came out flat, but my hands were shaking under the table. "The whole time.""Not the whole time. I moved back three years ago." She wouldn't look at me. "After I heard you'd started dating Enzo. I wanted to be close. In case something went wrong.""In case something went wrong." I let the words hang. "You knew he was my brother. You knew I was dating my own brother, and you didn't think to warn me?""I couldn't." Her voice cracked. "Alessio made i
Betrayal had teeth, and it was sinking deeper with every mile.I sat in the passenger seat of Dante's car, the photograph of my mother holding that baby still clutched in my hand. Enzo. My brother. The man who'd tried to have me killed, who'd set me up as bait, who'd stood on a pier and offered to let me walk away while his men circled behind me. We shared a mother. We shared blood. And neither of us had known."She didn't keep him." Dante's voice cut through the silence, low and careful. He'd been watching me out of the corner of his eye since we left the cabin. "I should have explained it more clearly back there. I was still processing what Lila said about Isabella."I turned to face him. The passing headlights of a lone car swept across his features—the sharp jaw, the silver temples, the exhaustion carved into every line. "Explain now.""Enzo was brought to me when he was three days old. My father told me he was the orphaned son of a Moretti cousin who'd died in childbirth. I was t
Enzo was my brother.Not my boyfriend. Not my enemy's son. My mother's child. Lorenzo Moretti's bastard, hidden under an alias for a decade, placed in Dante's household as a wolf among sheep. The man who'd tried to use me as bait, who'd sent assassins to the penthouse, who'd stood on a pier and offered to let me walk away—he shared my blood.I stared at the photograph until my vision blurred. The baby in my mother's arms had Enzo's dark hair, Enzo's storm-gray eyes, Enzo's particular curve of the mouth. Two years older than me. Born before the payoff. Born before my mother disappeared with half a million dollars and left one child behind while keeping the other."She kept him," I heard myself say. "She left me in an empty apartment with a sandwich on the counter, and she kept him."Lila's face had gone white. "Essa, I didn't know. I swear I didn't know about any of this. Alessio never told me about Enzo's real identity.""Enzo knew." Dante's voice was hollow, the voice of a man who'd
Lila was in the cabin. The woman who'd sold my secrets to Enzo, who'd pulled a gun on me at the pier, who'd sent me warnings and disabled warehouse security and told me she was burning her phone—she was sitting in a hunting lodge with Alessio Moretti like she'd been there all along.I stared at the grainy surveillance image on Marco's tablet. "How long?""We don't know. But if she's been feeding Alessio information—""She's the reason he knew about the penthouse." My voice came out flat and cold. "She's the reason he had photos from inside the tower. She was never working for Enzo. She was working for Alessio the whole time."Dante took the tablet from Marco, his jaw tight enough to crack stone. "The disabled warehouse security. The warning about the north compound. The access codes that got us inside.""All of it." I pressed my palm against the elevator wall to steady myself. "Every time I thought she was helping me, she was helping him. Every warning was calculated. Every piece of i
I didn't leave the bedroom for two days.Not because I was hiding. Because I was thinking. About DNA tests and half-million-dollar payoffs and a mother who'd sold my future for a lump sum. About Alessio's flat, dead eyes when he'd called me "little sister." About Dante's face when I'd flinched from his touch—the way hope had drained out of him like blood from a wound.He kept his word about sleeping elsewhere. I heard him sometimes, moving around the penthouse at odd hours, his voice low on phone calls that never seemed to end. Marco Castellano had been informed about Alessio's reappearance. The other families were "concerned." Enzo had vanished from his exile location. And somewhere in the city, Alessio was waiting for the chaos he'd planted to bear fruit.Marco brought me meals I barely touched. "You need to eat, Miss Kane.""I need to understand how my mother took half a million dollars and never told me who my father was."He had no answer for that. Neither did I.On the third mo
I couldn't breathe.The security feed showed a man who should have been twenty years dead, standing in the lobby with his hands in his pockets like he'd just stepped out for coffee. Alessio Moretti looked like Dante's distorted reflection—same sharp jaw, same silver at the temples, same storm-gray eyes. But where Dante's face carried the weight of command, Alessio's held something lighter and far more dangerous. Amusement. The look of a man who'd already won a game no one else knew they were playing."He's asking to speak with Miss Kane," Marco repeated, and the words landed like a slap. "Alone."Dante moved before I could respond. His hand closed around my wrist—not gentle, not gentle at all—and he pulled me behind him in a single motion that sent me stumbling into Marco's chest. "Get her to the panic room. Now.""Dante—""He's not getting within fifty feet of you." He was already reaching for his weapon, his face a mask of cold fury.I yanked my wrist free. "He's asking for me. You







