Chapter 2

After dealing with the hijacked shipment at the warehouse, I drove to the private estate of my best friend, Camilla Moretti. She was one of the top cyber intelligence experts in the underworld and the Vitale family's Consigliere.

I told her everything that had just happened and asked her to dig into Alice's background and relationship status. Soon, she turned toward me with a grim look.

"You were right, Gabriella. That bastardo Raffaele is actually cheating on you. Alice is his mistress."

Camilla turned the screen toward me and let me see for myself. I opened the chat history between Alice and Raffaele.

"Don Borgia, thank you for the beautiful villa. I love it."

He sent her a kissing emoji. "Glad you love it. Move in tomorrow. You'll fall in love with the garden there."

There were also numerous large transfers in Alice's account. Camilla traced every single one back to an anonymous private account belonging to Raffaele.

She hacked into Alice's social media account. I scrolled through her old posts and found a selfie that showed the ruby-and-pearl necklace around her neck.

The caption read, "Grazie mille, amore mio. I love this beautiful necklace!"

Then the screen refreshed. Alice's latest post appeared. Attached was a screenshot of a project brief for an arms deal.

The caption read, "Amore mio is giving me the arms deal he's been working on for ages. He said I've been performing well lately and will give me a special promotion."

My fingers froze over the screen. A chill crawled over me.

That arms deal was a project I had spent an entire year securing. I had worked every connection I had and negotiated with countless people before finally getting my hands on it.

I never imagined Raffaele would take the deal I fought so hard to win and hand it to Alice, just to give her a stepping stone and pad her credentials.

I saved all of Alice and Raffaele's messages, the transfer records, and screenshots of her social media posts onto a USB drive. When I got home, I went into his study and turned on his laptop.

It was password-protected. I tried his birthday first—wrong. Then I tried mine—still wrong. With one last attempt, I entered Alice's birthday.

The laptop unlocked.

I smiled bitterly, then opened a file titled "Promotion List". Alice's name was right at the top.

I found another file labeled "Reason for Promotion". Inside was the very arms deal I had spent a year securing. There was no way I would let my hard work become a promotion gift from Raffaele to his mistress.

Just then, my phone rang. I glanced at the good-night messages Raffaele sent me every evening.

Suppressing the disgust rising in my stomach, I called my father, the Don of the Vitale family. "Papa, I want to hand over the arms deal I've been working on all this time. I want it to become a Vitale family operation."

After hanging up, I couldn't help wondering what Raffaele's face would look like when he learned who Alice truly was.