Chapter 4 - The Emerald and the Ash
The rain slicked the hood of the Porsche Panamera, catching the harsh yellow glare of a streetlamp as Victoria Carter-Moretti lowered her umbrella just enough to survey the carnage. Her gaze swept over the two Romano operatives bleeding onto the asphalt, lingered on the heavily armed men forming a perimeter around Dante’s Maybach, and finally snapped onto me. Her honey-blonde hair, styled into immaculate, soft waves that defied the London drizzle, framed a face that had once terrorized my childhood and now haunted my nightmares.
"Elena," Victoria’s voice cut through the hum of the idling engines, smooth as chilled champagne and laced with a toxic familiarity that made my spine turn to ice. "What a remarkably pathetic tableau. I leave you alone for three years, and you manage to drag yourself out of whatever filthy hole you crawled into, straight back into the crosshairs of a cartel war."
I instinctively pulled Leo tighter against my chest, shielding his eyes with my palm. "Stay back, Victoria. This has nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me?" A sharp, humorless laugh escaped her painted lips. She stepped forward, her five-inch Louboutin heels clicking rhythmically against the wet pavement, ignoring the puddles that threatened to ruin the red soles. "My darling husband Julian has been tearing the city apart looking for the missing ledger, and here you are, standing in the middle of a mafia execution zone, clutching a bastard child who bears an uncanny, unfortunate resemblance to the most dangerous man in Europe."
Before Victoria could take another step, Dante moved.
With a fluid, predatory grace, he stepped directly into her path, his broad shoulders blocking her view of Leo and me entirely. The contrast between them was striking: Victoria, the epitome of high-society wealth, draped in emerald cashmere and diamonds; Dante, the embodiment of underworld absolute power, his bespoke suit stained with the spray of rain and oil, his eyes cold and dead.
"Mrs. Moretti," Dante said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, menacing register that made the air in the alley feel thin. "You are trespassing in a private matter. I suggest you turn your car around and drive back to whatever charity gala you abandoned, before I forget that you share a bloodline with a woman I tolerate."
Victoria didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, predatory smile spread across her red lips. She raised her chin, her diamond studs catching the light. "Dante. How thrilling. Everyone in London whispered that the elusive, untouchable head of the Carter-Moretti blood feud had gone soft, retreating into the shadows after Lawrence Carter’s trial. But here you are, playing daddy to my disgraced, runaway sister and a child who shouldn't even exist."
She peered around Dante’s broad shoulder, her eyes locking onto mine with venomous triumph. "Did you tell him, Elena? Did you tell him how you begged Julian to marry you for eight agonizing years? Did you tell him how Julian looked you in the eye the morning of our wedding and told me that you were nothing more than a stray dog he kept around for warmth?"
My breath hitched. The words felt like physical blows, reopening wounds I had spent three years trying to cauterize.
Dante’s body stiffened. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. He didn't look back at me, but his hand—the one resting on the pistol holster beneath his jacket—tightened until his knuckles turned bone-white.
"That's enough," Dante commanded, his voice like cracking ice.
"Is it?" Victoria sneered, stepping closer, utterly fearless in the face of a man who routinely fed men to the Thames. "Because Julian is already on his way. And when he finds out that his pathetic ex-fiancée is hiding his greatest enemy’s bastard under our noses, he won't just ruin you, Elena. He’ll take the boy."
"If Julian so much as breathes in their direction," Dante whispered, the threat hanging heavy and absolute in the damp air, "I will burn the entire Moretti empire to ash before the sun rises."
May you like
Without waiting for her reply, Dante scooped me and Leo into his arms, pushing us into the back of the Maybach. As the heavy armored doors slammed shut, cutting off Victoria’s shrill laughter, the car surged forward into the storm, leaving the glowing emerald of her coat behind in the dark.
***
