Chapter 5
The camera shifted to a tight close-up of Anya. The bright, clear lighting illuminated every detail of her beauty—the expressive brows drawn together in nervous anticipation, the delicate, high cheekbones, and the stray wisps of hair escaping her loose French twist.
Anya held Gareth’s intense, unyielding gaze. She felt the heavy, terrifying weight of the entire syndicate pressing down upon her. She was entirely exposed beneath the golden glow of the cascading chandeliers, trapped between the man who owned the city and the woman who was about to marry him.
For a fraction of a second, a small, genuinely affectionate smile appeared on Anya’s soft lips. It was a smile born of pride in her work and love for the elderly woman who had shared the secret with her. But as she registered the immense, lethal power radiating from the Mafia boss, the smile quickly faded, melting into an expression of profound, protective concern.
She knew the absolute danger of her next words. If she spoke the truth, she would directly contradict the fiancée's narrative that the matriarch was a senile, forgetful burden.
Holding Gareth’s cold, observant eyes, Anya made her choice.
“Your mother taught me.”
Anya’s voice remained gentle, soft, and remarkably steady. The American accent carried the words clearly across the dead silent room, shattering the elegant illusion of the evening like a hammer against glass. It was a quiet, devastating detonation of truth.
After delivering the sentence, Anya broke eye contact with Gareth for just a second. Her expressive eyes flicked downward, glancing pointedly toward the heavy white plaster cast resting on Beatrice’s injured wrist, before snapping back to the Mafia boss. It was a silent, desperate plea for him to connect the dots.
A collective, stifled gasp rippled through the gathered relatives and associates. To state that the supposedly confused, frail matriarch had possessed the mental clarity to meticulously teach a complex family recipe to a servant was a revelation that directly challenged the future bride's authority.
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Across the polished walnut table, Delphina’s fair, rosy skin drained of color. She realized the narrative was slipping rapidly from her manicured grasp. The dessert was not a mistake; it was a calculated message, a testament to Beatrice's perfectly sound mind. She needed to immediately reassert her control and paint the situation as a tragic, confused hallucination of an old woman.
Before Gareth could formulate his next question, Delphina moved to intercept the narrative, plunging herself directly into the line of fire.
