Chapter 11 - The Phantom Syndicate
The peaceful illusion of our newly merged empire lasted less than a month.
I was six months pregnant when the first black envelope arrived at our penthouse dining table. It didn't arrive by mail or courier; it was left inside Nikolai’s locked private study, pinned to his desk with a silver dagger bearing an unfamiliar crest: a coiled viper wrapped around a shattered crown.
Nikolai’s jaw set into stone as he opened the wax seal. Inside was a single photograph of me entering my medical clinic earlier that morning, with a red target reticle drawn over my stomach. Beneath it, a single line in dark red ink: The Moretti bloodline ends with the child.
"Don Vane," Nikolai growled softly, the paper crumpling in his fist until his knuckles turned ghostly white. "The head of the Syndicate of Seven. He controls the European shipping lanes Julian was trying to sell out to."
"Julian was just a puppet," I realized instantly, stepping up beside my husband and placing a steady hand on his arm. "Don Vane was the master holding his strings. When we put Julian in a cell and seized the Hart Foundation, we didn't just ruin Julian—we destroyed Vane's multi-billion-dollar money laundering pipeline."
"He thinks Chicago can be bought," Nikolai said, his gray eyes flashing with a terrifying, apocalyptic heat. "He thinks because you are pregnant, I am soft. He thinks I will hide."
"Then let him think that," I said smoothly, my heart beating fast but my mind remaining as cold and analytical as ever. "A predator is most dangerous when its enemy believes it is cornered. We don't hide, Nikolai. We set a trap."
Before Nikolai could respond, my encrypted phone chimed with an urgent security alert from the underground holding facility where Julian was being detained.
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I unlocked the screen. The live security feed showed Julian’s cell door wide open. The guards lay unconscious on the concrete floor, and on the wall, written in spray paint, was a message: The game has just begun.
Julian had been broken out. And he wasn't running away—he was coming back for blood.
