Chapter 9

Dante Moretti POV:

"What is it, Boss?" Capo Rossi called out, raising his glass high. "Did she sign over the house?"

The men laughed, a raucous, distant sound that seemed to belong to another lifetime.

I didn't hear them.

My world had narrowed down to the single, trembling piece of paper in my hand.

PATIENT: Elena Moretti.

DATE: October 14th.

PROCEDURE: Termination of Pregnancy.

GESTATIONAL AGE: 8 Weeks.

NOTES: Fetus healthy. Mother requested termination due to high-stress environment and lack of paternal support.

October 14th.

That was three days ago.

The day of the ambush.

The day I claimed Sofia's child.

The math didn't just hit me; it severed the tether to my reality.

Eight weeks.

That was long before the kidnapping.

Before the Russians ever touched her.

This wasn't a product of rape.

This was mine.

This was the child we had tried for five years to conceive.

"No," I whispered. The word scraped against the dry ruin of my throat. "Impossible."

I looked at the date again, praying for the numbers to rearrange themselves.

October 14th.

The memory of that day crashed into me, visceral and violent.

I remembered dragging Elena to the transfusion room.

I remembered the ghostly pallor of her skin. Her shaking hands.

I'm anemic. I'm sick.

She had just had an abortion.

She had just lost our child.

And I...

I forced her to give blood.

To save Sofia.

The room started to spin. The crystal chandeliers blurred into dizzying streaks of light.

I felt like I was drowning in my own bile.

"Dante?" Sofia's voice was sharp, cutting through the haze. "What is that?"

She tried to snatch the paper.

I pulled it away, my grip crushing the document into a permanent scar in my palm.

"She was pregnant," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from miles underwater. "Elena was pregnant."

"With a Russian bastard," Sofia said quickly, her eyes darting around the table. "You said it yourself."

"No," I roared, slamming my hand on the table. The cutlery jumped and clattered like frightened bones. "Look at the date! It was mine! It was my son!"

The ballroom went deathly quiet.

"And she killed it," Sofia whispered, seizing the narrative with the precision of a viper. "See? She's a monster. She killed your heir out of spite."

For a second, the rage flared, hot and blinding.

Yes. She killed it. She signed the paper.

But then I saw the voice recorder at the bottom of the box.

A small sticky note was attached to it.

The Truth.

I picked it up.

My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped it.

"Dante, don't," Sofia said. Her voice wasn't sweet anymore. It was thin, brittle, desperate. "Throw it away. It's just more lies."

She lunged for the recorder.

I shoved her back, hard enough to send her stumbling.

I marched to the podium, ignoring the stunned gazes of my soldiers, and held the device to the microphone.

I pressed play.

Elena's voice didn't come out.

It was Sofia's.

And a man's voice. A thick, Russian accent.

The sound boomed through the speakers of the Grand Ballroom, echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

"He is a fool," Sofia's recorded voice sneered, dripping with contempt. "Dante thinks he is honoring my father. He doesn't know my father hated him."

"And the child?" the Russian voice asked.

"Yours, Sergei. Obviously. But the Outfit will raise him. And when Dante dies in the 'accident' we planned, I will be the Regent. And we will hand Chicago to the Bratva on a silver platter."

The recording hissed into silence.

Then a click.

And another file played.

"I'll push her down the stairs. I'll say she attacked me. He'll believe anything I say. He's my dog."

The silence in the ballroom was absolute.

It was the silence of a tomb before the lid is nailed shut.

I looked up.

Sofia was standing there. Her face was as white as the tablecloth.

"It's a fake," she whispered, her lips trembling. "Deep fake. AI. Elena made it."

I looked at the screen behind the stage.

The projector had turned on.

Photos began to cycle.

Sofia kissing a man with tattoos on his neck.

Sergei. The man who had killed three of my soldiers during the ambush.

The man who had "kidnapped" her.

It wasn't a kidnapping.

It was a reunion.

My vision didn't just go red; it was consumed by a blood-soaked tide that washed away the last of my restraint.