Chapter 6

Alessia POV:

The call came while I was standing under the shower, trying to wash the scent of the hotel ballroom off my skin. My phone rang from the marble countertop, a shrill, insistent sound that slashed through the hiss of the water.

It was the hospital.

My heart seized in my chest, a cold fist squeezing the air from my lungs. I stumbled out of the shower, grabbing a towel, my hands slick with water as I fumbled to answer.

"Mrs. Moretti?" a nurse's voice, tight with panic, crackled over the line. "It's your father. He's crashing. You need to get here now."

I don't remember hanging up. I don't remember getting dressed. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a car, urging the Moretti driver to go faster, the city lights a meaningless blur outside the window.

I burst into the hospital and into chaos. The entire cardiac wing was cordoned off. Nurses were rushing, doctors were arguing, and a line of stern-faced men in dark suits stood guard, blocking the entrance.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't go in," one of them stated, his hand coming up to bar my way.

"My father is in there! Alessio Ricci!" I cried, my voice raw. "They said he was crashing!"

A harried-looking doctor overheard me. "Ricci? He's been moved to the third-floor overflow. We had to clear the wing for a VIP."

A VIP. While my father was dying.

I ran for the stairs, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I found him in a small, crowded room, hooked up to a dozen machines that beeped a weak, faltering song. His eyes were closed, his face pale and waxy.

"What happened?" I asked the young resident who was checking his vitals.

"We don't know. His heart just gave out. He needs the specialist, Dr. Evans, but..." He trailed off, looking nervously toward the hallway. "The entire senior staff is with the VIP."

"Who?" I demanded, my voice low and dangerous. "Who is the VIP?"

The resident wouldn't meet my eyes. "A... a Miss De Luca. From a prominent family. It's just a routine check-up, but she insisted."

Isabella.

The name was a block of ice in my veins. This wasn't a coincidence. It was her. That phone call I'd seen her make. This was her cruelty-a calculated strike to block the very people who could save my father's life.

"Then we move him," I said, a desperate plan igniting in my mind. "There's a private cardiac center two miles from here. I'll pay whatever it costs. Get an ambulance. Now."

It was a frantic, desperate scramble. But for a moment, there was hope.

We got him into the ambulance, the paramedics working on him as we sped through the city streets, sirens wailing. I held his hand, whispering to him, begging him to hold on.

We were five blocks away when it happened.

A black truck appeared out of nowhere. It didn't ram us. It just... sideswiped us. A sharp, brutal jolt sent the ambulance careening into a row of parked cars. It wasn't a devastating crash, but it was enough. A classic mob tactic. A delay, not a kill.

The engine died. The sirens cut out.

"We're stuck!" the driver yelled. "It's going to take a few minutes to get clear!"

Inside the back, the paramedic's face was grim. The rhythmic beep of my father's heart monitor faltered. It sped up, then slowed.

And then it stopped.

Replaced by a single, long, unbroken tone.

The ten-minute delay had been fatal.

I don't remember the ride back to the first hospital. I remember a doctor, his expression a mask of practiced pity, delivering the verdict. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Moretti. He's gone."

I didn't cry. I felt nothing. A vast, cold, empty space had opened up inside me where my heart used to be.

I walked back to the cardiac wing. The guards were gone. The floor was quiet. I found a young nurse cleaning up.

"The VIP," I said, my voice flat, devoid of all emotion. "Was it Isabella De Luca?"

The nurse looked terrified, but she nodded. "Yes. She left about twenty minutes ago. Said she was bored."

That was it. The final, damning piece.

This wasn't neglect. This wasn't a tragic accident.

This was murder. A meticulously planned execution. A vendetta aimed directly at my soul.

And in that moment, in the silent, sterile hallway, the grief inside me didn't just harden. It froze, then fractured, and from the pieces came a single, diamond-hard point of purpose.

I took out my phone. My hand was perfectly steady.

I sent a message to the lawyer Marco had given me.

"Liquidate everything. Burn it all to the ground."