Semua Bab The Don's Ruthless Empire: Bab 71 - Bab 80

Point of view: Isabella"If we are going to survive everything still coming for us, Matteo, we need to stop protecting each other from the truth and start actually trusting each other with it."He looked up at me from across the study, the photograph from the joint office still resting on the desk between us, two dead fathers smiling beside a stranger neither of us could name. Nico had returned home safely an hour earlier, shaken and silent, refusing to say where he had gone, and the relief of that alone had left me too raw to keep pretending everything else felt manageable."I am not protecting you from anything," Matteo said, though the tiredness in his voice told me he understood exactly what I meant regardless."You did not tell me two of your own men were seen talking to Dante until I asked you directly," I said, though I kept my tone gentle rather than accusing, because I understood the impulse even as I refused to let it stand unchallenged. "We cannot build whatever this is bet

Point of view: Isabella"Where is it, Nico. Tell me right now where you took that photograph before someone far more dangerous than me finds out you have it."My brother stood in the doorway of his own bedroom, arms crossed, chin lifted in the exact stubborn angle I remembered from every fight we ever had as children, except now the stakes were nothing like the small disagreements of our childhood. I had driven straight from the compound the moment I read Matteo's message, terror making my hands shake against the steering wheel the entire way."I took it to someone who might actually know who Alfio Greco is," Nico said, and the calm defiance in his voice frightened me more than shouting ever could have. "Someone outside both families, someone who might tell us the truth without protecting either side of this war.""Who," I demanded, crossing the room to stand directly in front of him. "Who did you show it to, Nico?""A friend from school," he said. "Her family has old connections in M

Point of view: Isabella"There is a second drawer, Matteo, hidden beneath the first one, and I think it has been waiting here far longer than either of us has been alive."My fingers trembled as I pressed the hidden seam I had found beneath the desk in the joint office, the same desk that had already given up one secret only days earlier. Matteo knelt beside me, his flashlight steady despite everything else that had gone unsteady between us since the docks burned, and together we watched a second, thinner compartment slide open with a groan that sounded almost like relief.Inside lay a single burned page, its edges curled black and fragile, most of the writing lost entirely to whatever fire had nearly claimed it before someone rescued it in time. I lifted it carefully, my breath catching as I recognized fragments of handwriting I had seen only once before, in the margins of my father's old shipping ledgers."This is my father's writing," I said quietly, my voice unsteady. "Matteo, thi

Point of view: Isabella"You should have told me the moment you suspected Salvatore, Matteo, instead of letting me learn the full truth standing beside you in that library like a stranger."The words came out sharper than I intended, but I could not soften them, not after everything Salvatore had finally admitted, not after realizing Matteo had carried his own suspicions about his uncle for longer than he had shared with me. We stood in the hallway outside the library, the burned page from my father still folded inside my jacket, and I watched something flicker across Matteo's face that looked uncomfortably close to guilt."I did not know how deep it ran until tonight," Matteo said. "I suspected he was hiding something about Costa. I never imagined Alfio Greco, Isabella. I never imagined any of this.""That is not the same as telling me nothing," I said, though the anger in my voice had already begun softening into something more exhausted than furious. "We promised each other honesty

Point of view: Isabella"I have been waiting fifteen years for someone from either of your families to finally walk through my door and ask for help instead of demanding it, Isabella Conti."Camilla Marchetti's voice carried an ease that seemed almost out of place given everything surrounding our arrival, her office overlooking the Marabella harbor decorated with a restraint that spoke of old money grown comfortable enough not to need to prove itself anymore. I had expected coldness, calculation, the same careful distance every powerful family in this city seemed to wear like armor. Instead she rose from behind her desk and crossed the room to greet me with a warmth that caught me entirely off guard."I did not expect a welcome," I admitted honestly, glancing at Salvatore and Enzo standing just behind me, both clearly as surprised as I was."My family has watched the Conti and Rossaro war from a careful distance for a very long time," Camilla said, gesturing for me to sit. "Long enoug