Chapter 3
The private study of the Bellandi estate was a fortress of dark walnut paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, illuminated by crisp, natural daylight pouring through reinforced steel-paned windows. There was no fireplace burning; the room was cold, clinical, and smelled faintly of gun oil and aged paper.
Nico sat behind the massive antique desk, holding Vivia on his knee. On the blotter rested a pristine porcelain cup of black coffee and a small plate of butter biscuits.
"Eat, Vivia," Nico murmured, his voice softening into that rare, quiet warmth reserved solely for his daughter. "You're safe here."
Vivia picked up a biscuit with trembling fingers, her hazel eyes darting toward the heavy mahogany door. Her small lip was still swollen where Marcella had struck her, a dark bruise blooming against her fair, rosy cheek. "Daddy... Aunt Marcella said Mommy was bad. She said Mommy stole things from the big house."
Nico reached out, his calloused thumb gently wiping a crumb from her chin. "Your mother stole nothing, little bird. Your mother was the only clean thing in this entire city."
"Mommy told me a secret before she went to sleep," Vivia whispered, leaning her head against his chest. "She said if Aunt Marcella ever touched my hair, I had to run to the garden and tell the trees."
Nico’s jaw tightened. "She touched your hair?"
"She looked for the zipper," Vivia said simply. "Every night when you were in Chicago. She pulled on my dress and looked inside the seams."
Nico closed his eyes for three seconds, absorbing the suffocating weight of his own blindness. For fourteen months, he had believed Julianna’s death was an act of tragic fate. He had mourned in silence, throwing himself into syndicate warfare, expanding the Bellandi territory across three states, while the architect of his misery had been sitting at his breakfast table, pouring his coffee and pretending to mother his daughter.
The heavy door clicked open. Rafe Calder stepped inside, carrying a military-grade encrypted laptop in a hard ballistic case.
"The guests are secured in the east wing, Boss," Rafe reported, stepping up to the desk. "No outgoing signals. I jammed the cellular frequencies within a two-mile radius. Silvio is sweating, but nobody is making a move."
"And the groom?" Nico asked, his voice returning to that low, lethal hum.
"Vincent Corban’s motorcade is thirty minutes out from the gate," Rafe said, setting the laptop on the mahogany surface and popping the latches. "Six black Suburbans. Heavily armed. They aren't coming for a wedding reception, Nico. They’re coming to sign the final partition of the northern docks."
Nico looked at the drive lying beside his coffee cup. He peeled away the protective plastic with a surgical flick of his thumbnail. The casing was worn, scratched from months of rubbing against the interior lining of Vivia’s dress.
"Insert it," Nico commanded.
Rafe slid the drive into the USB port. The screen flickered, executing a decryption sequence that took forty-five seconds of tense, mechanical hums.
Then, three folders materialized on the desktop: Audio Logs, Manifests, and The Corban Treaty.
Rafe clicked on the audio folder. A single waveform appeared, timestamped forty-eight hours before Julianna’s death.
May you like
A soft, trembling voice filled the quiet room—Julianna’s voice, breathing heavily through an oxygen mask:
"Nico... if Rafe is playing this for you, it means I didn't survive the night. Marcella didn't just invite the Corbans to our table. She gave them the access codes to the Atlantic pipeline. She has been slipping digitalis into my herbal tea since the third trimester. I found the vials in her dressing room behind the false mirror. She isn't marrying Vincent Corban for an alliance, my love. She’s marrying him because they signed an agreement to execute you at the altar."
