Chapter 7 - The Bitter Truth
I stared at the speakerphone in absolute, paralyzed horror.
“Mom?”
The line went completely dead for five agonizing seconds.
“Lena, baby, I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
Her voice was cold, calculated, and entirely lacking the maternal warmth I remembered.
“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed, clutching Leo tighter to my chest.
“Dante Rosselli is a monster, Lena.”
She explained that Dante had not been looking for Leo out of a father’s love.
Leo was the sole inherited heir to the massive Moretti fortune through his late mother's bloodline.
Whoever controlled the child controlled the entire criminal underworld of the East Coast.
“I protected this baby so I could destroy Dante and take over the syndicate myself,” my mother confessed.
Dante slammed his fist against the steel wall, his eyes burning with intense fury.
“You set my wife up to die, Elena!”
My mother laughed coldly through the crackling speaker.
“Isabella was weak, and you were blind.”
She ordered me to open the heavy steel door and hand the baby over to Marco immediately.
She promised that if I gave her Leo, she would let me walk away with enough money to disappear forever.
I looked down at the innocent, sleeping child in my arms.
Then I looked up at Dante, a man bleeding and broken, who had thrown his own body over mine to save us.
“I will never give him to you,” I said with sudden, fierce conviction.
I slammed my hand onto the keypad, completely cutting the active connection.
Dante stared at me, a profound sense of awe washing over his hardened features.
“She is going to detonate the ceiling to get to us,” Dante warned quietly.
May you like
I grabbed a heavy tactical pistol from the weapons rack and met his gaze.
“Then we do not wait in here to die.”
