The Don's Ruthless Empire のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 441 - チャプター 450

POV: Isabella"Say her name," I said, my voice cracking on the last word, "or I swear to God, Camilla, I will walk out of this room and find her myself."Camilla did not look away from me, which was somehow worse than if she had. The council table between us still smelled faintly of the coffee no one had touched in an hour, and somewhere down the hall a clock kept ticking with a patience none of us in that room possessed anymore. "Rosa," she said finally. "It's Rosa, Isabella."The word landed like a fist to the chest. Rosa, who had fed half this family at her own table before any of us had titles worth fighting over. Rosa, who had raised Nico alone after his father disappeared into whatever grave the old wars had dug for him. Rosa, who had never once asked this family for protection because she had never once believed she needed it. I thought of her kitchen, the smell of rosemary and garlic that clung to it no matter the season, and felt something in my chest tighten so hard it was d

POV: Isabella"You knew my father," I said, before Rosa had even finished sitting down, my voice sharper than I meant it, sharpened by hours of fear I hadn't been allowed to put down yet. "You knew him before any of us understood what he was."We had found her an hour before dawn, unharmed, sitting calmly in the back office of a shuttered bakery three streets from her own house, guarded by a man who called himself only a favor owed and who vanished the moment Nico pulled his mother into his arms. The office smelled of old flour and cold coffee, and a single bare bulb swung slightly overhead as though someone had brushed past it only moments before we arrived. Rosa had not been taken so much as removed, carefully, deliberately, kept safe by someone who apparently wanted her seen but not harmed, which frightened me more than violence would have.Rosa looked at me now with the particular calm of a woman who had spent decades being underestimated and had learned to use it. "I knew your fa

POV: Isabella"You're smaller than I imagined," I said to the man standing in the half light of the old harbor warehouse, my voice steadier than I felt, "for someone who's held this family hostage to a lie for thirty years."Enzo did not look like the ghost I had built in my mind over the last few hours. He was an old man now, gray and stooped, dressed plainly, standing alone in the center of an empty warehouse floor with nothing in his hands but a folder held against his chest like something precious. The building smelled of salt and rust, and somewhere above us a loose panel of tin roofing creaked faintly in the wind coming off the water. Nico stood rigid beside me, Adrian a half step behind him, Matteo close enough that I could feel the tension radiating off him without needing to look. Dario stood a little apart from the rest of us, his shame from the drive over still written plainly across his face."I never wanted to hold anyone hostage," Enzo said, his voice thinner than I expe

POV: Isabella"A daughter," I repeated, my hands trembling around the photograph before I had even fully looked at it, "which means somewhere out there, Enzo, this family has a cousin none of us have ever known existed."The photograph showed a young woman, perhaps twenty, standing outside a small stone house with the sun behind her, squinting slightly at whoever held the camera. Something in the shape of her jaw felt suddenly, uncomfortably familiar, and I realized with a jolt that I was looking at a face that resembled my own sister more than it resembled anyone I had ever called family by blood alone. The edges of the photograph were soft with handling, as though it had spent years folded inside a wallet rather than framed on any wall."Her name is Concetta," Enzo said. "She would be in her fifties now, if she's still alive. I lost contact with her father years before I lost contact with the rest of this world, Isabella. I can't promise you she's still where I last knew her to be."

POV: Isabella"You have your mother's jaw," I said to the woman standing at the edge of the dock, my voice unsteady with a kindness I hadn't planned to feel so quickly, "and you have no idea how strange it is to recognize a stranger's face at all."Concetta stepped off the small boat with the careful balance of someone unused to the water, a worn leather bag clutched against her chest the same way Enzo had clutched his folder only an hour before. She was smaller than I expected, gray threading through dark hair pulled back plainly, her eyes sweeping across all of us gathered on the dock with the wary calculation of a woman who had clearly learned young never to trust a warm welcome without questioning it first. The morning had turned the water behind her the color of pale gold, and for a moment she stood silhouetted against it like something out of a memory none of us had actually lived."I received a letter three days ago," she said, her voice careful, accented faintly by a life live