All Chapters of The Lie that Binds: Chapter 81 - Chapter 87

The room reeked of scotch and sweat, the air heavy and suffocating as though it carried the grief of a man who had once been untouchable, but now lay fractured in the ruins of his own self.Stefano De Ricco, who had rebuilt his father's empire on iron, blood, and control, was slumped in a velvet chair that had lost all the elegance of its design under the weight of his despair. With his shirt undone and sticking to his chest, his hair damp and unruly, his hands trembled faintly. They cradled a half-empty glass that caught the dim light of the chandelier above and refracted it like broken shards of hope. His jaw was tight yet it quivered. His eyes, once sharp and merciless, were bloodshot pools clouded by alcohol and betrayal. His breath was uneven, each inhale dragging in the thick scent of liquor, and each exhale sounding like the groan of a man whose insides had been torn apart, and though the silence pressed around him, his mind screamed with memories, with images of Serena’s smil

The dungeon was silent except for the sound of Stefano’s breathing. Heavy. Rough. Like a man dragging air through a throat filled with stones. His eyes, sharp with fury, had grown tired of Serena’s trembling pleas, but something gnawed at him still. She had broken, she had spoken, and she had confessed that her people had left her to rot in the shadows of his prison. Yet her words about the tracker had stirred a sliver of curiosity in him, and Stefano De Ricco was not a man who ignored curiosity when it pulled at him like a thread unraveling a greater truth.He held the bloody small device in his hand, its metallic surface cold, unassuming, nothing more than a foreign intrusion beneath her skin. He had cut it out with his own knife, his hand steady while Serena screamed and begged him to stop. He had not wavered, not once. His wrath demanded proof, and now proof sat in his palm like a silent answer.Stefano turned it over, studying its shape, its wires, its compact body. “So this is

Serena found her way. She returned to Washington on October 16th, a Tuesday, where all the staff and bosses at the CIA headquarters were too engrossed with their work to expect her return.With her heart carrying the bruises of Stefano’s dungeon, Marco’s shadow still lingering at her back, and a fetus to worsen the situation, she believed that if she could at least confront her superiors, then maybe she could demand answers and take back some measure of control over a life that had spiraled into betrayal and confusion.As soon as she stepped through the highly advanced security glass doors that scanned her identity, it didn’t take long before all eyes fell on her. This was a familiar feeling, being stared at while walking down the aisle, but this time the eyes held no admiration. They looked at her with suspicion, with disbelief, with the kind of expression that said, you shouldn’t be here. Or worse—you shouldn’t be alive.Ignoring them, she marched forward. She needed to see the Chie