Chapter 4
The silence in the grand ballroom was absolute, heavy with the metallic tang of adrenaline and unspoken violence. Two massive bodyguards in dark formal suits immediately stepped forward, positioning themselves silently behind Helena. They did not help her stand; they simply stood as living walls, trapping the matriarch against the ruined registration table. They answered only to Roman.
Helena pushed herself upright, her hands shaking violently. A bright, angry red welt was already forming across her fair, rosy cheek. She looked at the cold, dead eyes of her son, searching for any trace of the boy she had raised, but found only the ruthless executioner of the D’Angelo family.
"Roman, you have to listen to me," Helena pleaded, her American accent cracking under the immense pressure. "I did this for you. I did this for the family name. She is a nobody! A common girl with no ties, no wealth, no pedigree! She was going to drag you down!"
"You told them. I was dead," Roman stated. His voice remained deep and slightly raspy, the volume unnervingly low. He did not yell. He did not need to. Every word was measured, cold, and dripping with lethal promise.
"It was the only way to make them leave!" Helena cried, gesturing wildly toward Nora. "If she thought you were alive, she would have kept coming around! She would have demanded a place at our table! I was protecting your empire from a parasite!"
"Protecting," Roman echoed, the word tasting like venom on his tongue.
Nora stood trembling behind him, her hands resting protectively on Sophie’s small shoulders. "We didn't want your empire," Nora said, her voice shaking but laced with three years of accumulated, agonizing grief. "We just wanted him. But you told me he was shot in the warehouse raid. You gave me a folded flag and told me to disappear or your enemies would come for my daughter."
Roman’s broad shoulders went completely rigid beneath his tailored suit. The artistic tattoos on his neck shifted as his jaw clenched so hard the bone looked ready to snap. He had been told by his mother that Nora had taken a payoff and abandoned him while he was in a coma recovering from that very raid. Two separate, perfectly orchestrated lies to keep them apart.
"Where is the money, Mother?" Roman asked softly, taking a single, deliberate step toward her.
"I put it into the offshore holding accounts," Helena stammered, backing up until her spine hit the edge of the mahogany table. "I kept it safe! I didn't steal it for myself, Roman! I kept it within the family trusts! I swear it!"
"You starved my blood," Roman whispered, his cold eyes dropping to look at the worn, faded cardigan on his three-year-old daughter. "You let my child walk in rags. While you wear pearls bought with my blood."
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"She isn't worthy of our name!" Helena shrieked, a sudden, desperate burst of aristocratic arrogance breaking through her terror. "She is a bastard child! You are the Boss, Roman! You need a wife from the Five Families! You need pure blood!"
"Take her," Roman commanded, his voice dead and hollow.
