LOGIN"Celeste sends her regards."The voice slithered through the darkness like smoke, and I felt Dante's body coil beside me—every muscle tensed, every instinct primed for violence. His hand found mine in the black, squeezing once, a silent signal. Stay behind me."Show yourself." Dante's voice was ice, but I heard the undercurrent of fury. "You're in my home. That's a mistake you won't survive."A soft laugh echoed from somewhere near the study door. "I've survived worse than a Don with a pretty hostage. Celeste trained me for years. You think darkness frightens me? I was born in it."The lights flickered back on without warning, flooding the penthouse with harsh white. And there he was, a man I'd seen before, standing in the shadows of the Rossi estate, hovering near Isabella during the chaos. He was tall, lean, with close-cropped black hair and eyes the color of dead ash. In his hand was a gun, pointed directly at my chest."I know you." The memory clicked into place. "You were at the
"Enough," Isabella had said. "More than enough."The words echoed in my skull as Dante pulled me through the smoke-filled corridor, his arm locked around my waist like he could shield me from an army of shadows. Marco's men were already moving, sealing exits, checking corners, but the safe house suddenly felt like a cage. Every wall was too close. Every window was a potential sniper's nest."How many operatives does Celeste have left?" Dante's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. He had Isabella pinned against the wall, his hand at her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a reminder of how easily he could end her. "Give me a number, or I'll make what's left of your life very unpleasant."Isabella's smile was bloodless. "You won't kill me. You need me alive to testify.""I need you breathing. That's not the same as comfortable.""Forty. Maybe fifty." Her eyes glittered with malice. "Celeste spent decades building her network. You've only scratched the surface. Every
"A traitor inside my organization." Dante's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of absolute authority. Every man on the marble steps went still. "Elara, what exactly did Celeste tell you about Viktor's death?" Elara stood between me and Enzo, her posture still rigid from years of conditioning. But her voice, when she spoke, was her own. "She said the bomb at the docks was never meant to kill Viktor. He was supposed to survive. Someone gave him faulty information about the blast radius. Someone who knew exactly where he'd be standing." Enzo's face had gone pale. "I was at those docks. I brought Viktor into the operation. If someone fed him bad intel—" "Then they wanted him dead before he could discover who he really was." I turned toward Marco, who was still reeling from the revelation that he'd raised Viktor in secret. "You said you gave him a different name. A different life. Did Celeste know?" "She must have." Marco's voice was hollow with grief and guilt. "She found out
"A third child?" My mother's voice shattered the silence on the marble steps. "That's impossible. I only gave birth twice, Enzo, and then the twins. There was no third pregnancy."Elara pulled her hand from mine, her eyes still holding that flicker of uncertainty. "That's what Celeste told me. She said there was another baby born the same night as us. A boy. She said Mom wasn't the only woman in that hospital room."I turned toward Celeste, who stood in cuffs with Alessio beside her. Her composure had returned, that razor-thin smile plastered across her weathered face. "You've been waiting to drop this bomb since we arrived. So drop it. Who's the third child?""Your mother wasn't Lorenzo's only mistress." Celeste's voice dripped with satisfaction. "There was another woman at that hospital the night you were born. Another pregnant girl who'd been paid off and discarded. She gave birth in the room next door while your mother was screaming through labor with twins."Enzo stepped forward,
"You expect me to surrender?" I stared at my twin, at the cold precision of her posture, at the way her eyes tracked me without blinking. "I didn't walk through a war to kneel at your feet."Celeste's laughter echoed across the marble steps. "Bold words from a girl who stumbled into power by accident. You think you've earned your place at Dante's side? You were a pawn the night you walked into the wrong suite, and you're a pawn now. The only difference is that I'm offering you a choice.""Alessio offered me choices too. They were all lies." I stepped forward, feeling Dante's presence solid at my back. "What makes yours any different?""Because I don't need to lie." Celeste placed her hand on Elara's shoulder, and the girl remained perfectly still. "Your sister has been trained for twenty-two years to replace you. She knows every detail of your life—your foster homes, your relationship with Enzo, the night you walked into Dante's penthouse. She's studied you the way an artist studies a
"You sold more than one child?" I turned toward my mother, the photograph shaking in my grip. She was still sitting on the overturned crate, the dawn light harsh on her bruised face, and when her eyes met mine, I saw the answer before she spoke a single word.Enzo stood frozen beside her. "Mom. What is she talking about?"My mother's hands trembled in her lap. "I wanted to tell you. Both of you. I tried to write it in the letter, but I couldn't find the words. Every time I tried, I saw their faces.""Their faces." I stepped closer, the phone still clutched in my hand. "You sold Enzo first. I know that. But the caption says I'm not the first child you sold. Who else?"She closed her eyes, and the tears that slipped down her cheeks were decades old. "I was twenty-three when I had Enzo. Lorenzo's people took him three days after he was born. I thought that was the end of it—the one terrible choice I'd have to live with forever. But two years later, I found out I was pregnant again. With
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
The silence was worse than the gunfire had been.I stood at the shattered bar cart, surrounded by broken crystal and the metallic tang of spent ammunition, and listened to the penthouse breathe. Dante's men moved in quiet currents around me—sweeping glass, securing the hallway, dragging the last of
The blacked-out SUV carved through the city like a shark through dark water. I sat in the backseat beside Dante, my hands folded in my lap, my heart beating a steady war drum against my ribs. The driver—a silent, thick-necked man Dante had introduced as Marco—kept his eyes on the road, but I felt h
I woke to the smell of coffee and the distant murmur of Dante's voice through the bedroom door.For a disoriented second, I didn't know where I was. The sheets were too soft, the pillows too expensive, the light slanting through the curtains too golden for my cheap apartment with its perpetually st







