Chapter 7 - The Final BetrayalVincent walked forward slowly, his head bowed. The elderly man who had served the Moretti family for three decades looked suddenly frail, his silver hair unkempt, his shoulders slouched under an immense weight of guilt.
"Why, Vincent?" Alessandro asked, his voice dangerously soft. "My father trusted you with his life. I trusted you with mine."
Vincent stopped five feet away, tears welling in his old eyes. "I had no choice, Don Alessandro... I had no choice!"
"There is always a choice!" Alessandro shouted, his composure finally breaking into rare, terrifying rage. "You planted a murder weapon in a three-year-old child's bedroom!"
"They have my grandson!" Vincent cried out, falling to his knees and weeping openly on the marble floor. "Julian... Julian kidnapped my six-year-old grandson two weeks ago! He told me if I didn't help him frame Sophia and destroy your reputation with the Council, he would send me the boy's fingers one by one!"
Sophia gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The sheer depth of the corruption and cruelty within the family sent a chill straight to her bones.
Alessandro stood silent for a long moment, his chest rising and falling heavily. The lethal anger in his eyes slowly shifted into something far darker—a calculated, deadly resolve.
"Where is your grandson, Vincent?" Alessandro asked quietly.
"In an abandoned meatpacking warehouse on 4th Street," Vincent sobbed. "Guarded by Julian’s loyalists... They were waiting for the signal that Sophia was arrested."
Alessandro turned to Sophia. "Go upstairs. Stay with Emma. Lock the doors."
"Alessandro, wait!" Sophia begged, reaching for his arm. "What are you going to do? Julian is in jail, but his men are still dangerous!"
"I am going to finish this," Alessandro said, looking down at her hand on his sleeve. His expression softened for a split second. "Nobody touches children in my city. Not yours, and not Vincent’s."
"Promise me you’ll come back," Sophia blurted out, surprised by the sudden, intense ache in her heart at the thought of losing him. "Emma... Emma needs her artist."
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Alessandro offered a ghost of a smile—a genuine, warm expression that completely transformed his rugged, intimidating face.
"I’ll come back, Sophia," he promised softly. "I still have a butterfly on my forehead to clean off."
