Chapter 9
The grand dining hall, with its carved walnut walls and polished marble columns, felt like a beautifully gilded courtroom where a death sentence had just been handed down. The tall ivory candles continued to burn steadily, their reflections shimmering across the gold-rimmed porcelain plates that held a feast no one would ever finish.
Daphne stood frozen opposite the table, her champagne satin gown rustling softly as she trembled violently. She looked at the faces of the assembled guests—the politicians, the capos, the wealthy associates. Not a single person met her eye. The revelation of the brother's murder had severed any political ties she might have hoped to leverage. She was a pariah, completely isolated in a room filled with light.
"You can't prove anything," Daphne stammered, her fair, rosy skin completely drained of blood. She gripped the edge of the mahogany table, her knuckles turning white. "It is the word of an old woman. You have no evidence, Soren. My family brings the eastern ports to this alliance. You cannot touch me based on a hallucination."
"Does a hallucination possess the knowledge of a specific dosage?" Soren asked, his voice echoing cleanly through the room.
He didn't wait for her pathetic, scrambling answer. He slowly withdrew his hand from his mother's, ensuring she was calm, and took a single, deliberate step toward the center of the table.
"Did you assume my brother's autopsy was the final word on his death?" Soren inquired, his tone dropping into a register of pure, concentrated ice. "Or did you believe my wealth was insufficient to hire private toxicologists who test for exotic, untraceable botanicals?"
Daphne’s mouth dropped open. She stopped breathing. The terrified realization that Soren had already known about the poison, that he had been actively investigating his brother's murder before tonight, completely shattered her mind.
"You knew," Daphne whispered, genuine, unadulterated fear finally bleeding into her eyes.
"Is a hunter required to announce his presence before the trap is sprung?" Soren asked smoothly, his hands clasping casually behind his back.
He turned his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the silent, paralyzed guests.
"Is this memorial dinner concluded?" Soren asked the room at large.
The question was rhetorical, a lethal command disguised as an inquiry. The guests immediately understood. Chairs scraped against the thick patterned rugs as the most powerful men and women in the American mafia stood up in unison. They didn't speak. They didn't offer their goodbyes or polite pleasantries. They simply turned and began to file out of the luminous dining hall, desperate to escape the blast radius of the Boss's impending wrath.
Within ninety seconds, the massive, opulent room was entirely empty of guests. The only people remaining in the dining hall were Soren, Eleanor, Greta, Daphne, and a dozen heavily armed, white American security guards standing quietly in the shadows near the marble columns.
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"What are you going to do with me?" Daphne sobbed, tears of absolute panic ruining her pristine makeup.
"Will you confess your treason to the men standing behind you?" Soren asked, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the armed guards. "Or will we discover how quietly a traitor can disappear from a locked estate?"
