Chapter 6
At those words, the air in the room turned instantly glacial.
Alaric’s head snapped toward his daughter, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second before narrowing into slits of pure, lethal malice. “Serena. What did you just say?”
Bastian stumbled back two paces, his eyes darting frantically toward the locked double doors at the end of the hall. “She’s crazy! She’s hormonal! Alaric, she’s imagining things because of the pregnancy!”
“Three weeks ago,” Serena said, keeping her gaze locked on Bastian, “I had severe cramping after you brought me tea in bed. You insisted on calling your personal family physician instead of Dr. Gabriel. You told me Dr. Gabriel was out of town. But Dr. Gabriel wasn't out of town, Bastian. My father had him waiting downstairs.”
Before Bastian could speak, the side doors of the dining hall clicked open. A slender man in his late fifties wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a tailored gray suit stepped into the room, carrying a thick manila folder. It was Dr. Gabriel, the Montesi family’s private physician for over twenty-five years.
“Good evening, Mr. Montesi,” Dr. Gabriel said, bowing his head slightly toward Alaric.
“Tell the room, Gabriel,” Alaric commanded, his voice trembling with a rage so profound that his knuckles turned white against his suit trousers. “What was in my daughter’s blood?”
Dr. Gabriel opened the folder and adjusted his glasses. “We ran three separate toxicology screens on Mrs. Coletti on the night of September fourteenth. We found elevated traces of synthetic prostaglandin and mifepristone derivatives mixed into an herbal sedative. In sufficient doses, it induces premature labor and placental abruption.”
A collective intake of breath swept through the dining hall. Down the table, veteran mobsters who had buried enemies without blinking looked at Bastian with visceral disgust. In their world, hits were business, contracts were politics, but poisoning an unborn child in her mother’s womb was an unforgivable desecration.
“You…” Bianca whispered, staring at her son with genuine horror dawning across her features. “Bastian… you tried to kill the baby?”
“It was a girl!” Bastian screamed, losing his mind entirely as the room closed in on him. “The ultrasound said it was a girl! If she had a daughter, your father would never hand over the reins! He would have kept running the family until he was eighty! We needed an heir now! We needed Faye’s boy!”
Alaric moved before anyone could react.
May you like
His large hand shot forward, wrapping around Bastian’s throat like an iron vice. With terrifying strength, the fifty-nine-year-old mob boss lifted the younger man off the floor, slamming him hard against the oak paneling. The sound of splintering wood cracked through the hall.
“You touched my daughter,” Alaric whispered into Bastian’s bulging, terrified eyes. “You tried to murder my grandchild.”
