Chapter 8 - THE TRUTH BEHIND THE NINE HOURS
Before Alessandro could slip out the back door, the kitchen window shattered inward.
A man in a black tactical mask vaulted into the room, raising an assault rifle.
Alessandro reacted with terrifying speed.
He lunged forward, slamming the barrel of his pistol upward into the man’s chin.
The attacker dropped his weapon and crashed hard onto the linoleum.
Alessandro pinned him to the floor, placing his boot firmly across the man’s throat.
“Who sent you?” Alessandro growled, pressing the gun barrel against the man’s temple.
“Moretti!” the assassin choked out.
“Bianca and her father!”
“They said... they said once you were dead, the alliance would default to them!”
Alessandro’s eyes flared with a lethal, blinding light.
He looked down at the assassin, then slowly lowered his weapon.
He looked up at me standing near the kitchen island.
“Serena,” Alessandro said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, agonized whisper.
“Now do you understand why I stayed in Venice those nine extra hours?”
I stared at him, my breath catching in my throat.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bianca didn't just seduce me,” Alessandro confessed, the words tearing out of him like shrapnel.
“She drugged my drink that night.”
“When you walked in and caught us, the poison was still in my system.”
“I couldn't stand under my own power for hours.”
“She locked me in that suite, threatening that if I tried to follow you, her father’s men would intercept your car on the highway before you reached the airport.”
I stood frozen.
“She... she threatened my life?”
“She threatened to slaughter everyone you loved,” Alessandro said, his voice breaking.
“I stayed behind to neutralize her guards, to secure a clean corridor for your escape, and to rip her empire apart from the inside before she could ever reach you.”
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“I didn't stay because I wanted her, Serena.”
“I stayed because I was fighting a war to keep you breathing.”
