Chapter 15 - The UltimatumThe honeymoon phase of our chaotic romance came crashing to an abrupt halt three days later.
I was in the estate’s sunlit kitchen with Maria, trying to learn how to make traditional Tuscan pasta, when the double doors of the kitchen flew open. Marco stood there, his face carved from stone, breathing heavily.
"Boss needs you in the study immediately," Marco said, not bothering with pleasantries.
"What's wrong?" I asked, wiping flour off my hands as my stomach knotted.
"Lorenzo Rossi has made a move," Marco replied grimly.
When I burst into the study, Alessandro was standing by the desk, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were stark white. Across from him on the mahogany surface lay a thick manila envelope and a polaroid photograph.
I walked over and looked down at the photo. My breath caught in my throat.
It was a picture of my best friend from New York, Rachel, walking out of the Columbus Circle café where I used to work, flanked by two men in dark suits. Across the back of the photo was scrawled a single line in Italian: An eye for an eye, Russo. Give us the girl, or the barista pays her debt.
"They found her," I whispered, the blood draining entirely from my face. "They found Rachel."
"Rossi thinks he can use your past life to break you—and through you, break me," Alessandro said, his voice dangerously low, vibrating with a suppressed, volcanic rage. "He wants to trade you for a slice of our shipping ports in Palermo."
"Then we trade!" I cried out, panic seizing my chest. "We can't let an innocent person die because of me, Alessandro! Rachel has nothing to do with any of this!"
Alessandro’s head snapped toward me, his dark eyes flashing with absolute fury. "We do not trade. If I hand you over to Rossi, you die before the sun sets, and he still kills your friend to send a message. You are not going anywhere."
"Then what are we going to do just sit here while he tortures her?" I shouted, tears of frustration streaming down my face.
May you like
Alessandro walked over, grabbed my shoulders, and forced me to look at him, his grip unyielding.
"We are going to wage war," he said, his voice dropping into a chilling, absolute promise. "Rossi wanted to play with fire. Tonight, we burn his entire empire to the ground."
