Chapter 4 - The Enemy's Bloodline
The air left my lungs in a cold gasp. "You're lying," I whispered, though deep down, the missing pieces of the last six months began clicking into place with terrifying precision. His unexplained late-night absences, his sudden coldness, his refusal to let me leave the penthouse without six armed guards—it wasn't indifference. It was a siege.
Dante stood up slowly, pulling a encrypted tablet from his jacket and handing it to me. On the screen were wiretap transcripts, surveillance photos, and internal dossier reports. But as my eyes scanned the top-secret documents, my blood ran cold for a completely different reason. Sofia Vale wasn't just a Genovese operative; her real last name was Moretti. She was Dante’s half-sister—the illegitimate daughter of his late, tyrannical father, raised in secret by his rival clan.
"She didn't just want my empire, Lena," Dante said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. "She wanted to eradicate my lineage entirely. The kiss in the office was staged because she knew you were coming. She wanted you to leave my protection so her hitmen could target you in the open, away from my main fortress." A cold realization struck me like a physical blow: by fleeing into hiding, I hadn't escaped the danger—I had walked straight into Sofia's trap.
