All Chapters of The Don's Ruthless Empire: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Point of view: Matteo"I trusted you with my father's secrets before I trusted anyone else alive, Salvatore. Tell me right now why Dante Vitale seems to know them just as well as I do." My voice filled the study, sharper than I intended, but I no longer cared.I had not slept since the meeting with Dante, and it showed in the way my hands would not sit still on the desk between us. Every hour that passed felt like sand running through my fingers, one week narrowing fast into something closer to days, and I no longer had the patience to soften the questions I needed answered.Salvatore sat across from me, his expression carefully composed in the way it always was when he wanted to appear wounded rather than caught. "You are asking me if I betrayed this family.""I am asking you where you were the week before Dante made his move against Nico," I said. "Enzo raised the question three days ago, and I have spent every hour since trying to prove him wrong.""And have you succeeded?""No," I

Point of view: Matteo"Explain to me, right now, how a photograph of me kissing Isabella Conti ended up circulating through Vitale territory before sunrise, because someone in this house sold it, and I want a name." My voice echoed off the study walls, colder than I had spoken to anyone in months.I had not slept. By the time the sun came up over the harbor, the photograph had already moved through three different channels, each one adding its own poison to the story until the version reaching my ears barely resembled the truth of that quiet moment at all. Somewhere in that transformation, a kiss had become a scandal, and I intended to find out exactly whose hands had made it one.Enzo stood near the door, having brought the news himself the moment it reached him, his face grim in the early light. "It reached Dante's men within hours, Don Rossaro. It is already being framed as proof that you are compromised, that a Conti has gotten close enough to influence Rossaro decisions from insi

Point of view: Matteo"Say that name again, slowly, because I need to know I did not just imagine hearing it come out of your mouth." I said it before I had fully processed what Rosa Conti had just revealed, the room around us suddenly narrow and too warm."Renzo," Rosa repeated, her voice unsteady. "He came to see your father the night he died. I only saw him for a moment through the window, but I never forgot his face. Older, sharp featured, with a scar along his jaw he did not try to hide."I felt the study tilt slightly around me, the same way Isabella had described feeling when I first told her the truth about our fathers. Some names, I was learning, carried enough weight to change the shape of a room the moment they were spoken aloud.Isabella's grip on my arm tightened, both of us understanding the same terrible arithmetic at once. "That is the same man Salvatore told you about," she said. "Your mother's brother. The one who vanished twelve years ago.""It cannot be a coinciden

Point of view: Matteo“Come alone, Isabella. Or your Don learns nothing tonight.” I read the message over her shoulder and felt something cold settle in my chest, the particular fear of a man who has finally found something worth losing.“Absolutely not,” I said before she could even respond. “Whoever this man is, he does not get to send you into the dark by yourself.”“Matteo, he is testing us,” Isabella said, her voice steadier than I expected. “If we refuse, we lose him entirely. I did not come this far to walk away from the only lead we have.”“And if I lose you the same way your family lost your father,” I said, hearing my own voice crack in a way it had not cracked in years, “what exactly have I gained by finding the truth.”She turned to face me fully, her expression softer than the fear should have allowed, the wind off the water pulling strands of hair loose around her face. “Then trust that I am not walking into this blind. Enzo can stay close enough to see, even if he canno

Point of view: Isabella“Someone took him.” The words fell out of me before my mind had fully caught up to the fear tearing through my chest, and for one terrible second I could not remember how to breathe.“We do not know that yet,” Matteo said, already moving, already barking orders at the guard who had brought the news. “Check every camera in the east wing. Now.”But I did know it, somewhere deep in the part of me that had spent two years learning exactly how my brother thought. Nico had never once in his life stayed quiet when someone he loved was in danger, and tonight, hearing Renzo's name and watching us walk into the dark without him, he had made a choice I should have seen coming the moment he stormed out of the room after our earlier argument.“He went after Renzo himself,” I said, my voice shaking. “He believes this is his fault, Matteo. He has believed that since the day the debt collectors first came to our door, and tonight was the first time anyone gave him a name to ch