Chapter 1 - The Weight of a NameThe heavy silence in the Emerald Room felt suffocating. The low hum of the restaurant outside—the clinking of crystal glasses, the murmurs of wealthy patrons, the jazz notes drifting from the lounge—vanished completely, drowned out by the thunderous pounding of my own heart.
Dominic Russo stood up slowly. At over six feet tall, with tailored charcoal suits and a presence that could command a boardroom of thousands, he towered over the table. But right now, his gaze was fixed entirely on me, locked in a stare of utter disbelief.
"How do you know that name?" Dominic demanded, his voice dropping an octave. It wasn't an angry question; it was loaded with a raw, desperate urgency that made the hairs on the back of my arms stand up.
Around the table, the expensive historians and top-tier linguistic professors shifted uncomfortably. One of them, a man with thick-rimmed glasses who had spent the last hour sweating over the manuscript, scoffed and adjusted his tie.
"Mr. Russo, surely you aren't listening to a waitress," the professor interjected, trying to regain his composure. "The girl is clearly playing a prank, or someone leaked the basic vocabulary of the dialect to her. That journal dates back nearly a millennium. William Hart? Who is William Hart?"
Dominic didn’t even glance at the professor. He kept his dark, piercing eyes locked onto mine. "Shut up, Edward," he muttered, never breaking eye contact. Then, he took two steps closer to me, his voice trembling slightly. "Olivia... Olivia Hart. Is William Hart your father?"
"How do you know who my father is?" I repeated, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. I stepped back, my fingers gripping the edge of the serving tray until my knuckles turned white. "He died three years ago. He was a disgraced academic, a man everyone in the university circuit called a madman because he chased myths. He didn't have powerful friends. He didn't know billionaires like you."
Dominic let out a harsh, breathless laugh—a sound that held no humor, only a profound, haunting realization.
"Disgraced?" Dominic whispered, shaking his head. "To the academic world, maybe. Because they were too blind to see what was right in front of them. But to me... to the Russo family... William Hart was the only man who ever came close to the truth."
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He reached down, gently touching the old leather cover of the journal as if it were fragile glass.
"And if you are William's daughter," Dominic continued, looking back up at me with absolute conviction, "then you aren't just a server. You are the only person on this planet who can finish what he started. And God help us all, the clock is running out."
