Chapter 2 - The Family Safe
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Twenty minutes later, the party continued downstairs, but the temperature inside my father's old study felt like absolute zero.
Enzo, my second-in-command, stood silently by the door. I had the family safe open. Behind the property deeds and trust documents was a thin file bearing Sophia's full name.
I threw the file onto the mahogany desk. Inside were documents dated four years earlier. Bank transfers. An address in upstate New York. A strict confidentiality agreement.
And one document bearing my mother's elegant, damning signature.
I looked at Enzo, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “What the hell is this, Enzo?”
Enzo didn't answer. His eyes remained fixed on the floor.
I picked up the final page. It was a signed decree, essentially a banishment order heavily backed by syndicate threats. Sophia hadn't disappeared because she was afraid of my world. Someone had made sure she stayed away to preserve the "pure" Italian bloodline of the Moretti family.
The door opened. My mother walked in, her posture rigid, her chin held high.
“You shouldn't be snooping on your engagement night, Dominic,” she said smoothly.
I picked up the file and held it up. “You paid her to leave. You threatened the woman I loved.”
“I protected this family,” Victoria countered sharply. “She was a nobody. You are a Moretti. You are meant to marry Isabella.”
I stepped toward her, the fury in my chest threatening to crack my ribs. “The girl downstairs. Lily. Whose child is she?”
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My mother looked away. “That is the maid’s child. A mistake.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” I growled, my hands shaking with a violent kind of rage. “Whose child is that?”
