Chapter 23 - The Architect's Truth
Vincent Moretti slowly spun his chair around to face me. His face was lined with deep wrinkles earned from decades of violence and power, but his eyes—the exact same piercing, steel-grey eyes that looked back at me in the mirror every morning—were sharp and unflinching.
"You burned Sterling’s estate to the ground," my father said, a faint, approving smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Very dramatic. Just like your mother when she was angry."
"You let me believe you died twenty years ago," I said, my voice tight, the barrel of my Beretta lowered but my hand gripping the handle hard enough to turn my knuckles white. "You let me carry the weight of a dying empire, fight off assassins, and watch my children become targets in a proxy war you engineered."
"I didn't engineer the war, Adrien. I engineered the filter," Vincent replied calmly, pouring two glasses of aged scotch from a crystal decanter on his desk. He pushed one glass across the wood toward me, though I didn't touch it. "The underworld is a shark tank. If I had stayed in the light, every ambitious cutthroat in Europe would have used me as a target to overthrow our bloodline. By stepping into the shadows, I forced the weak links—like Arthur and Dante—to expose themselves."
"And Sophie?" I demanded, my tone dropping into a dangerous register. "Was she part of your grand filter too?"
Vincent’s expression softened slightly for a fraction of a second. "Sophie is my daughter, Adrien. Born late in my life, kept hidden away from the syndicate wars for her own protection. When Arthur’s faction began probing my safehouses, Elena hid her in the estate. She was safer right beneath your nose than anywhere else on Earth."
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"She’s my sister," I whispered, the reality finally settling deep into my bones.
"She is a Moretti," Vincent corrected firmly. "And right now, she is the only person who holds the biological key to the master firewall protecting our entire global network."
