Chapter 11 - The Secret War
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The silence in the study was heavy and suffocating.
"My father is a mob boss?" Leo blurted out, breaking the quiet.
"No," Adrian corrected sharply. "Dominic Falcone is your grandfather. The man your mother loved was his son, Marcus Falcone. He was killed in a hit ordered by my father shortly before your mother disappeared."
Elena felt dizzy, gripping the edge of the mahogany desk to steady herself. The poverty she had endured, the late nights struggling to pay rent, the agonizing death of her mother in a cheap hospital ward—all of it was the result of a mafia blood feud she never even knew existed.
"My mother ran away to protect us," Elena realized aloud, the pieces finally clicking together. "If your father had found out she was pregnant with a Falcone baby, he would have killed us."
"Yes," Adrian admitted, his voice thick with shame for a father he had once revered. "He would have."
Adrian reached into the lockbox and pulled out the leather-bound journal. He flipped through the delicate pages. The handwriting was unmistakable. It was his older sister’s.
He stopped on a page near the end.
"She didn't just hide to protect you from our father," Adrian read, his brow furrowing deep in concentration. "She hid because the Vance family was blackmailing her."
He looked up at Elena.
"Robert Vance—Cassandra's father—was the one who arranged her disappearance," Adrian explained, reading from the journal. "But he didn't do it out of kindness. He forced her to sign over her shares of the legitimate Moretti businesses to his holding company in exchange for keeping you and Leo hidden. He bled her dry. That's why she lived in poverty while they lived in mansions."
A sudden, hot flash of rage ignited in Elena's chest. Cassandra had humiliated her, mocked her uniform, and laughed at her mother's necklace. But Cassandra's entire life of luxury had been funded by money stolen from Elena's mother.
"Where is Cassandra now?" Elena asked, her voice surprisingly steady, devoid of the fear she had felt earlier in the ballroom.
"She is currently locked in the wine cellar," Adrian replied coldly. "Waiting for her father."
"I want to see her," Elena demanded.
Adrian looked at the curvy maid standing in front of his desk. She was no longer shrinking into herself. The subservient posture was gone, replaced by the fierce, undeniable pride of a Moretti.
May you like
Adrian smiled, a dark, dangerous expression.
"Let's go."
