Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Porcelain
Hook: The ultimate betrayal isn’t spoken; it’s whispered in the dark by the person sharing your bed.
Alessandro did not move. The white roses in his left hand suddenly felt heavy, like a bouquet left on a fresh grave. The silence in the room was suffocating, broken only by the ragged, trembling breaths of Elena Romano as she knelt amidst the glittering shards of broken porcelain.
Bianca took a step forward, her silk robe rustling like a snake in dry grass. Her face immediately shifted into an expression of fragile vulnerability—the exact look that had charmed high-society galas from Palermo to Milan.
"Alessandro, darling," Bianca breathed, her hand reaching out to touch his lapel. "Thank God you walked in. The woman has lost her mind. I asked her to move my vanity cases, and she grew completely violent. She threw the crystal jug at me. If I hadn't stepped back—"
"Quiet," Alessandro said.
The word wasn't shouted. It was delivered in a flat, icy monotone that made the guards outside the door instantly straighten their spines. Bianca’s hand froze mid-air.
Alessandro knelt. He didn't care about the water soaking into his bespoke trousers or the sharp porcelain biting into his leather shoes. He reached down and gently took Elena’s wrist—the one bearing a stark, angry red handprint.
"Did you touch her?" Alessandro asked, his eyes remaining fixed on the maid.
"Mr. Vitale... please," Elena whispered, her voice cracking as tears spilled over her eyelashes. "I didn't mean to. I was just cleaning. My daughter... please don't let them hurt Clara."
"Nobody is hurting Clara. And nobody is hurting you," Alessandro said. He stood up, turning his gaze to his fiancée. The warmth that had been there an hour ago, when he was planning their wedding date, was entirely gone. In its place was the cold, calculating look of the Don. "Bianca. Tell me why my future wife is throwing tantrums and striking the staff."
Bianca’s eyes flashed with a momentary spark of venom before she quickly masked it. "She’s a thief, Alessandro! That’s what she’s trying to cover up! I didn't want to ruin your homecoming, but my family’s heirloom emerald necklace—the one passed down from my grandmother—is missing from my safe. I caught her snooping around it. When I confronted her, she shattered the jug to create a distraction!"
Elena gasped, shaking her head frantically. "No! I swear on my life, no! I have never touched your safe!"
"The safe requires a biometric scan and a rolling code, Bianca," Alessandro noted, his voice dangerously level. "How would a maid bypass that?"
"She must have watched me enter it! These people are cleverer than you think," Bianca hissed, dropping her sweet act just a fraction. "Search her room. Search her daughter’s things. You’ll see I’m telling the truth."
Alessandro looked at the shattered porcelain. Then he looked at the open door of the suite, where little Clara was still peeking in, clinging to a guard’s trouser leg.
"Before we search anyone’s room," Alessandro said softly, "let us talk about what Clara said. She said you threatened to make her mother disappear. She said you told her that if her mother told, you would take her away."
Bianca laughed, a high, nervous sound. "A child’s imagination, Alessandro. You’re going to take the word of a six-year-old over mine? Over the woman you are about to marry?"
Alessandro walked over to his desk, placed the white roses down, and took out the folded piece of paper containing their wedding date. Without looking at it, he dropped it into the roaring fireplace. The paper caught fire instantly, turning to black ash.
Bianca’s breath hitched. "Alessandro..."
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"We are delaying the wedding," he announced. "Until the emeralds are found. And until I discover exactly what Elena was supposed to keep quiet about."
As Alessandro ordered the guards to take Elena and Clara to a secure guest room for protection, he didn't notice the sharp, calculating look Bianca shot toward the window. She wasn't panicked because she was caught; she was panicked because her timeline had just been destroyed. And in the world of the Vitale crime family, a destroyed timeline meant bodies were about to drop.
