Chapter 12 - Whispers in the Dark
The massive estate felt suffocatingly quiet at three in the morning.
I slipped silently out of the king-sized bed, careful not to disturb Luca, whose heavy, rhythmic breathing indicated a rare, deep sleep. I pulled a silk robe tightly around my shoulders, shivering as my bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor.
I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the news footage of the Romano compound burning to the ground.
I crept down the darkened hallway, slipping past the silent security cameras I had memorized over the past two weeks, and pushed open the heavy oak door of the nursery. The room was bathed in the soft, warm glow of a nightlight.
Little Leo was fast asleep in his crib, his tiny chest rising and falling peacefully.
I leaned over the wooden railing, tears hot and stinging against my cheeks. I loved this baby as if I had carried him myself. Yet, his father had slaughtered my father. His bloodline had eradicated mine. The mafia code demanded a soul for a soul, blood for blood. By all the laws of the dark world I had been dragged into, I was supposed to hate this child.
Instead, I reached down and gently stroked his soft cheek. He sighed happily in his sleep, turning his face into the warmth of my palm.
“I will never let anyone hurt you,” I whispered into the quiet room. “Even if the threat comes from my own ghost of a family.”
I needed answers. I needed to know why the Romanos had abandoned me to the foster system if I was their legitimate heir.
Leaving the nursery, I navigated the shadows back to the study. I bypassed the biometric lock on Luca's private filing cabinet—having watched him enter the code a dozen times—and pulled out the thick, encrypted DNA file I had hidden earlier.
Flipping past the clinical data, I found a series of old, yellowed letters attached to the back. They were written by my mother, a woman I had never known.
“The war between our families will consume us all,” her elegant handwriting read. “I must send Isabella away. If the syndicate knows the Romano boss has a daughter, she will be used as a pawn, or worse, murdered in her crib to end our lineage. I will erase her existence to save her life.”
I gasped, pressing a hand over my mouth. My parents hadn't thrown me away because I was unwanted. They had given me up to protect me from the very monster sleeping in the master bedroom down the hall.
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A sudden, chilling realization washed over me. The hit at the restaurant that night—the one ordered by Elena Moretti—wasn't just a random act of jealousy. Elena had somehow discovered who I really was. She hadn't hired assassins to kill a waitress.
She had hired them to assassinate the lost Romano princess before I could ever claim my throne.
