Chapter 2 - A Bride’s Desperate Secret
Sophia’s breath hitched. A single tear escaped her eye, sparkling like a diamond before she hastily wiped it away, conscious of the three hundred eyes lingering on them.
"I didn't have a choice," she whispered, her voice choked with terror. "Marco took Leo two weeks ago. I tried to find a way out, Aleandro! I tried to tell you, but Rossi had men watching my apartment, watching my mother..."
Aleandro’s eyes narrowed into slits of dark obsidian. "The transmitter beneath your chair. What is it for?"
"Rossi told me... he told me it was a listening device," Sophia stammered, her fingers clutching his suit jacket desperately under the tablecloth. "He said he needed to hear your private conversation with the capos after the toast. He said if I placed it under the table, he would release Leo at midnight!"
"He lied to you, Sophia," Aleandro said softly, his tone chillingly calm. "It’s not a microphone. It’s a radio-frequency detonator wired to a plastic charge taped beneath my chair. At 9:15, when I stand up to announce our wedding date, Marco intends to blow this entire table into splinters—wiping out me, my high command, and you."
Sophia’s eyes dilated in pure horror. She looked down at the table, her body shaking so hard her wine glass rattled against the silver charger plate.
"No... no, he swore—"
"He was going to frame your family for my murder," Aleandro interrupted coldly. "A tragic betrayal by the bride’s family. It gives the Camorra the excuse to seize the northern shipping docks while the Moretti family burns in chaos."
Sophia grabbed his wrist, her face desperate. "Kill me if you must, Aleandro. I betrayed your trust by keeping this from you. But please... save my brother. Leo is only nineteen. He doesn't know anything about this life!"
Aleandro looked into her eyes. He looked for the deceit, the greed, the coldness of an assassin. But he found only the hysterical, self-sacrificing terror of a sister who had been pushed into a corner by monsters.
He remembered the three years they had spent together—the quiet mornings, her gentle laughter, the way she nursed him when he was wounded during the turf war in Milan. She hadn't betrayed him for money or power. She had been coerced through the one vulnerability she possessed: her family.
And Marco Rossi had underestimated one fundamental truth about Aleandro Moretti.
Nobody played with Aleandro's family. And despite everything, Sophia was already his.
Aleandro snapped his fingers subtly beneath the table edge.
Behind him, towering in the shadows near the velvet curtains, stood Matteo, his most trusted enforcer and right-hand man. Matteo leaned down instantly.
"Boss?"
"Marco Rossi has a hostage in the old wine cellar on 4th Street—Sophia’s brother," Aleandro said, his voice dropping into a register reserved only for executioners. "Take four men. Silence the guards. Extract the boy. You have eight minutes."
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Matteo didn't hesitate. "And Rossi?"
"Leave him to me," Aleandro said. "And Matteo... tell the demolition squad to bring the jammer."
