Chapter 5 - Unmasking the Serpent
Vanessa sat in the center of the grand salon, sipping herbal tea as if nothing had happened. She wore a pristine white Chanel dress, her blonde hair styled into an immaculate chignon. When Dante walked into the room, she offered a sympathetic, fragile smile.
“Dante, darling. The estate looks so dreadful this morning. Are you holding up?”
Dante walked slowly toward her, stopping three feet away. He didn't sit down.
“Where were you at eleven o’clock last night, Vanessa?” he asked.
Her smile flickered for a fraction of a second, but she recovered quickly with a soft laugh. “In my suite, of course! Traumatized by the fire. Why on earth would you ask me that?”
Dante tossed Marcus’s dossier onto the glass coffee table between them. The pages fell open, displaying bank transfer receipts, contractor invoices, and digital blueprints of the estate’s electrical grid, all bearing Vanessa’s digital signature.
“Because my security team recovered your laptop from the east wing before the roof collapsed,” Dante said, his voice dropping an octave. “Along with the surveillance footage of you paying twenty thousand dollars in cash to an industrial arsonist named Viktor Vance.”
Vanessa’s face drained of color. The pristine mask cracked completely, revealing the panicked, desperate woman underneath.
“That’s... that’s a forgery!” she stammered, standing up so fast her teacup shattered on the marble floor. “You can’t prove I had anything to do with that! Your mother is senile, and that fat maid is a common thief who probably started the fire herself trying to cover her tracks!”
Before Vanessa could finish the sentence, the double doors of the salon swung open.
Elena Moretti rolled inside, her wheelchair pushed by a nurse. Her face was pale, but her eyes burned with absolute, unyielding authority.
“She is not a thief, Vanessa,” Elena said, her voice ringing clear across the room. “And she is worth a thousand women like you.”
Vanessa backed away, looking from Elena to Dante, whose expression offered no mercy.
“Marcus,” Dante said without turning around.
Two armed security guards stepped out from the shadows near the fireplace.
“Escort Ms. Laurent off the property,” Dante ordered coldly. “Hand her over to the federal marshals waiting at the gates on charges of attempted murder, arson, and corporate fraud.”
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“You can’t do this!” Vanessa screamed as the guards grabbed her arms, dragging her kicking and clawing across the polished floor. “Your family will be a laughingstock! Everyone knows who I am!”
“You were nobody before my name,” Dante said, watching her go without a single flicker of emotion. “And by sunset, you won't even exist.”
