Semua Bab BLOOD & JUSTICE: Bab 51 - Bab 60

“Miss, this isn’t—” Agnes caught herself. Two decades managing the Salvatore kitchen had taught her that the wrong sentence, finished at the wrong moment, could shatter a morning beyond repair. She planted her hands on her hips and tried again. “Mr. Dante prefers the kitchen to be—”“Relax, Agnes.” The smile arrived instantly. Warm. Precise at the corners. “I’m just making breakfast. Dante likes frittata with sage and prosciutto, doesn’t he?”Agnes seized up. The only sound that escaped her was a low, indeterminate murmur—the kind that could mean resignation or vigilance wrapped in good manners, depending on who was listening.“Mr. Dante prefers no one in the kitchen before his breakfast.”“Then this will be a pleasant surprise.”The argument died before it drew breath. Measured footsteps sounded in the corridor. Both women turned.Dan

Pretending always demanded an exhausting price.The woman claiming to be Isabella Moretti had spent three consecutive days rearranging the foyer flowers—always choosing the clusters Dante favored most. She positioned herself at every strategic corner: the breakfast table, the sitting room, the veranda. Her presence always preceded his. Quiet as a stage crew laying the backdrop before the lead actor stepped into the light.The lead actor had no intention of appearing.Dante existed in fragments—a broad back in a well-cut suit cutting through the corridor, a silhouette framed in a doorway, the sound of dress shoes descending a staircase. The way he moved through each room said everything he refused to speak aloud. He was aware of the foreign object in his peripheral vision.He simply kept his gaze straight ahead.✘   ✘   ✘“Last month’s curation report is finished.”It was the most rational pretex

The bicycle chain snapped at the exact moment Alessandro and Lorenzo had already blazed around the bend ahead. By all practical measure, they’d won the race—probably already tasting the sweetness of two scoops of ice cream each of them had been pre-ordering in his head.Early December in Westchester had a habit of serving up visual illusions that were hard to ignore. Above them, the evening sky was incinerating itself, dissolving into gradients of orange and violet so saturated they refused to be dismissed. And it was directly beneath that dying dome of color that Dante lost all control.Isabella detected the disaster before it happened. A strange vibration traveled upward through her seat—the front wheel shuddered violently, followed by a mechanical shriek from the chain as it scraped once against the gear before surrendering entirely. The handlebars lurched hard to the left. The bicycle veered without direction toward the gentle slope of a grassy fi

The fireplace in the main parlor burned steadily, gnawing at the cold that crept through the gaps in the windows. Its light moved slow and deliberate along the walls, casting long, restless shadows that seemed to have lost their way.Svetlana Kuznetsov had no need for a clock. Her body—eight decades deep in this world—was a more accurate compass than any instrument. She could read the shifting spectrum of light in a room the way other people recited passages from books they’d memorized a thousand times over. The knitting needles in her lap kept their constant rhythm, a cadence unchanged in twenty years. Stitch by stitch. Symmetrical. Unhurried.Then—a faint vibration in the air. Footsteps drawing closer. Too light to be Dante’s, yet too purposeful to belong to Victor.The wrinkled corners of Svetlana’s mouth curved into a thin smile before Lorenzo fully materialized in the doorway.“Nonna.”His voice

“Agnes, where is the vanilla extract?” Nonna Sveta swept her gaze across the counter like a general who had lost her battle map.Agnes—cheeks already tomato-red from the sixth time answering the same question—handed over the small bottle without argument.At the center island, Elena kept sorting dried fruit. Her hands moved on their own. Her eyes did not.Including toward the woman in pastel across from her—folding the mascarpone cream in entirely the wrong direction, with complete and convincing confidence.Elena said nothing.“Isabella,” Nonna Sveta called, without turning from the baking pan. “Do you know why Panettone must be baked slowly? Not because a recipe dictates it. Because nothing truly worth having is ever born from haste.”Isabella lifted her head with a smile timed to the second. “Nonna is absolutely right. My grandmother always used to say the same thing.&rd