All Chapters of The Don's Ruthless Empire: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

POV: Isabella "Say it again, Vittorio. Say it loud enough for every person in this room to hear exactly what you did to my father." My voice did not shake, though my hands were trembling behind the folder I held against my chest. The ballroom had gone silent in a way I had never experienced before, three hundred guests frozen mid conversation, champagne glasses suspended halfway to open mouths, the orchestra stumbling into an uneven stop as Matteo raised one hand toward the musicians. Camilla Marchetti stood near the terrace doors, her expression carefully unreadable, though I caught the small nod she gave me before I stepped forward. Vittorio did not flinch. He never did. He simply set his drink down on a passing tray and studied me the way a man studies a problem he expects to solve quickly. "You have a folder, Isabella. Papers do not run empires. Loyalty does." "Loyalty," Matteo said quietly, moving to stand beside me, "is not the same as silence, Vittorio. You taught me tha

POV: Isabella"It is from Nico's number, Matteo, but Nico did not write this." My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the phone before he caught it steady between both of ours.The message was short, deliberately so. "Your brother is safe for now. Tell your Don to stop asking questions about Marco, or the arrangement changes tonight." No signature. No further explanation. Just enough to freeze the blood in my veins completely."This is not Vittorio's phrasing," Matteo said quietly, reading it a second time. "This is someone else entirely, Isabella. Someone using your brother to send a message directly to me.""I do not care whose phrasing it is," I said, my voice cracking despite every effort to hold it steady. "I care that my brother is somewhere I cannot see him, and someone is threatening to change an arrangement none of us have even discussed yet."Salvatore moved quickly toward the exit, already barking instructions into his own phone, and Matteo pulled me gently but firmly by

POV: Isabella"He is not here, Matteo. The warehouse is empty." My voice echoed strangely across the cavernous space, dust and moonlight the only things waiting inside where I had expected to find my brother's frightened face.Matteo swept his flashlight across empty crates and rusted machinery, his jaw tight with a frustration I recognized immediately, the particular fury of a man who had prepared for violence and found only silence instead. "This was never about the warehouse. This was about pulling us away from the gala at the exact moment Vittorio needed the room to himself."My phone buzzed again, and this time the message came from an unfamiliar number entirely. "Your brother is safe at the Marchetti estate. Camilla has him. Come back and we will discuss the terms of his continued protection.""Camilla," I said, showing Matteo the screen, relief and fresh suspicion tangling together in my chest. "She has Nico. But why would she take him without telling us first.""Because Camill

POV: Isabella"What question, Enzo. Do not make me ask twice tonight." My patience had worn thin enough that even my closest ally in that household felt the sharp edge of my exhaustion.Enzo shifted uncomfortably under the weight of every eye in the room. "Pietro asked me exactly which night the ledger would be moved for safekeeping. At the time, I assumed he simply wanted to schedule the household accounts around the security detail. I did not think to question it further.""That is not curiosity," Matteo said grimly. "That is exactly the information someone would need to time a fire precisely enough to destroy evidence before it could be secured."I watched the color drain slowly from Enzo's face as he realized the weight of what he had just admitted, a detail he had carried for months believing it meaningless. Guilt was written plainly across his features, though I could not yet tell whether it belonged to a man who had simply failed to notice danger, or one who had helped create i

POV: Isabella"Mama, look at me. Whatever you are hiding, I need to hear it from you before someone else forces it into the open first." My hands trembled slightly as I sat across from Rosa in her small kitchen, the familiar smell of coffee doing nothing to ease the tension between us.Rosa's eyes avoided mine, fixed instead on the chipped rim of her cup. "I do not know what you think I am hiding, Isabella. I have told you everything since your father died."I watched her hands tighten around the cup, small and weathered from years of carrying this family through every hardship that followed my father's death, and something in my chest ached at how much I still wanted to believe her without question. "Mama, I am not trying to hurt you by asking this. I am trying to understand how someone got close enough to hurt all of us without any of us noticing until it was almost too late.""I have only ever tried to protect you," Rosa said, her voice trembling slightly. "Every choice I have made