Chapter 1 - The Hollow Core
Aleandro’s question hung in the cavernous silence of the study, heavy with a menace that could crush a lesser man. Emma didn’t flinch. Her tiny hands simply tightened around her stuffed rabbit’s ears.
"No," Emma whispered. "She didn't see me. She was looking at the door like a scared dog."
Aleandro stood up slowly. The blood humming in his temples wasn't fear; it was pure, unadulterated ice. Isabella Romano. The woman whose scent still lingered on his silk sheets upstairs. The woman he had defended against the entire Italian syndicate, risking open warfare with the Verreaux family just to claim her hand.
He didn't call his security chief, Marcus. If Marcus was compromised, or if the bug had been active long enough for the whole house to hear, shouting orders would only trigger a trap. Instead, Aleandro walked to his mahogany desk, unlocked the bottom drawer with a biometric ring on his thumb, and pulled out an encrypted satellite burner phone and a Sig Sauer P226 with a custom suppressor.
"Emma," Aleandro said, his voice dropping to a low, flat register. "You are going to take your rabbit, go down the back service stairs, and find your mother in the laundry room. You will tell her that Mr. Moretti needs her to pack a small bag because you are both taking a long vacation. Do you understand?"
"Are we going to see the stars?" Emma asked innocently.
"Yes," Aleandro replied, his jaw tightening. "We are going to see the stars."
He watched the little girl scurry out, her tiny sneakers squeaking against the polished floorboards. The moment the heavy oak door clicked shut, Aleandro picked up the bug from the sideboard. He didn't smash it. Instead, he connected it to a frequency analyzer hidden inside his desk.
The screen blinked to life. Data streams cascaded down in green code. The device wasn't just recording audio; it was bouncing a localized high-bandwidth feed to a receiver within a two-mile radius. And the IP address tied to the handshake protocol?
The Romano Estate.
Isabella hadn't just sold him out. She had engineered a hostile takeover of the Moretti empire from the inside out, feeding every shipping manifest, meeting time, and safehouse location to her father, Don Salvatore Romano—the man Aleandro had sworn to destroy five years ago.
May you like
Aleandro checked his watch. 8:25 PM.
His phone buzzed. It was a text message from an unknown number: “She’s waiting for you in the conservatory, Aleandro. Don't keep your bride waiting. It's a killer view.”
