All Chapters of THE DON'S DAUGHTER: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Elise's POVJade's smile collapsed the moment she saw me. She fumbled with her phone and cut the live, standing up so fast the chair rolled back and hit the wall."Mrs. Reeds," she said, her voice suddenly small. "I didn't know you were — he's in a meeting, I was just—""Stop." I set the lingerie on the desk between us. "I'm not here for an explanation."She looked at the lingerie. Then back at me.The nervous act dissolved. Just like that — like a mask slipping sideways — the wide eyes and the trembling lip disappeared and what replaced it was something cold and almost amused."Oops," she said, and picked up the lingerie like it was hers to handle. Because it was.I looked at her. "You feel no shame at all."She shrugged, turning the bracelet over on her wrist. "Why should I? You're the one he's cheating on. That's your problem, not mine."I moved before I thought about it. My palm landed across her cheek with a crack that rang off the walls.Jade's head snapped sideways.For one sec

Elise's POVThe Vitale estate sat at the end of a private road lined with iron lanterns that my grandfather had imported from Florence when he built the original house. I had grown up counting them from the back seat of my father's car — there were forty-three. I used to fall asleep before we reached the gate.I knew I was home when I reached thirty-eight and my chest loosened for the first time in seven years.Don Victor was waiting on the front steps.He was not a tall man but he occupied space in a way that had nothing to do with height — the kind of stillness that came from decades of never needing to raise his voice to be obeyed. His hair had gone fully silver since I last saw him in person and there were new lines around his eyes but he was still the most commanding presence I had ever stood in front of and I had stood in front of heads of state.He looked at me — the hospital bracelet still on my wrist, my dress creased, my hand pressed against my side — and something moved acr

Elise's POVThe briefing took two hours.Marco laid everything out the way he always did — no softening, no editorializing, just facts in the order they happened and numbers where numbers were needed. I sat across from him in my father's war room with a glass of water I hadn't touched and I listened and I did not interrupt.The Greco family had moved on a Vitale shipment eight days ago. Intercepted it clean — no violence, no bodies, just gone. Forty million in product, vanished. The message was not subtle. Don Savio Greco had been circling the Vitale empire for three years, waiting for a moment of weakness, and my father's declining health had given him one.What Don Savio had not accounted for was me coming home."Who else knows about the interception?" I asked when Marco finished."Within our network? Everyone." He set down his folder. "Outside — it hasn't leaked yet but it will. These things always do.""Then we move before it does." I turned to the map spread across the table — sh