Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Don's Ruthless Empire: Kabanata 451 - Kabanata 460

POV: Matteo"You asked me to hide the letter from the council, Matteo, the same council I begged them to build. Do you hear how that sounds coming from the man who once ruled by silence? Tell me you hear it."Isabella said it in the back of the car, low and shaking, her eyes fixed on the window instead of on me. The driver kept his gaze forward. Salvatore rode in the car behind us with Camilla, and I had never been so glad to have two layers of glass between me and an old friend's guilt."I did not ask you to hide it," I said. "I asked you to wait until we knew who wrote it.""That is the same thing, and you know it." She turned to me at last, and I saw what I had done. Her eyes were red at the edges. She was not angry the way she got angry at enemies. This was the other kind, the kind that comes from being hurt by someone she trusts. "Thirty years ago I would have expected this from you. Now it feels like watching you step backward down a staircase we climbed together."That hit me h

POV: Matteo"A woman who cannot keep her own family's secrets in order has no business asking us to write laws for all of ours. Sit down, Signora Isabella. This hall is not your parlor."Aldo Bianchi said it in front of thirty people, in the great hall of the Conti house, beneath the portraits of men long dead. He was a broad man with a silver mustache and a voice trained by fifty years of shouting across warehouses. The silence that followed was so heavy I could hear the ticking of the clock above the fireplace.I felt my old self rise like heat in my throat. The Don would have crossed the room in three steps. The Don would have made Aldo apologize on his knees. My hand curled into a fist against my thigh.Isabella glanced at me. Only a glance, small and steady, a warning wrapped in a smile. Then she turned back to the room, and I watched my wife stand in front of thirty people who had just insulted her, with her shoulders straight and her chin high and her hands perfectly still."Si

POV: Matteo"Do not you dare die on me, Enzo! Not before you tell me who the lamp is! Breathe, please, just breathe! Somebody get the doctor, now, before I lose my mind!"I heard my wife's voice before I even reached the top of the stairs. It was three in the morning, and we had driven back from the chapel in near silence, the photograph tucked inside my coat like a stone against my heart. Now I ran down the hallway of the Rossaro house with my shoes loud on the wooden floor, and every old instinct in my body screamed at once.The guest room door stood open. Enzo lay on the bed with his lips the color of slate. Isabella knelt over him, her hair fallen loose, her hands pressed flat on his chest. Rosa stood pale by the window, both hands over her mouth. Concetta held a wet cloth to the old man's forehead. And in the corner, gripping his own wrists as if to stop himself from shaking, stood Nico."He called out," Nico said hoarsely. "I was in the hall. I heard a sound like something break

POV: Matteo"I did not sell anything, Signora Isabella. I only carried messages, and I swear on my mother's life that I never knew whose messages they were. I thought I was helping Nico. I thought it was a test."Luca said it on his knees, in the small study behind the great hall, with tears running down his young face. Nico stood over him with his fists clenched, breathing hard. I had never seen my son look so much like a man betrayed and so much like a boy about to cry. Rosa hovered near the door, one hand pressed to her chest.The scrap in the hall had shocked the whole room into silence. Beneath the lantern, the wet ink had spelled out one new line: Tomorrow, the third seat will vote. Nobody could explain it, and Nico had spent the rest of the session watching Luca. It had taken us an hour to find the thread after that. Nico had watched Luca all through the session, seen the way the boy flinched at every mention of Falcone, the way he would not meet anyone's eye. After the meeting

POV: Matteo"I found him, Nico. I found Falcone. And I recorded every word, because I could not think of another way to say sorry, so I brought you proof instead."Luca stood in the doorway of the great hall at dawn, hair wild, coat torn at the shoulder, a bruise blooming along his jaw. He held a small black recorder in both hands like a wounded bird. Nico crossed the floor in four strides and caught the boy in a hug so fierce that the recorder slipped and I dived to catch it."You idiot," Nico said thickly, his face pressed into Luca's hair. "You reckless, stupid idiot.""I know," Luca said. "I know."Isabella rushed forward too, her hands running over his face, his neck, his ribs. "Who hurt you?""Falcone's man. The one in the gray coat. He did not like being followed." Luca gave a shaky grin. "But I ran faster than he did."I held the recorder between two fingers. Thirty members of the council had gathered by then, half awake, fully anxious, the great hall thick with the smell of c