Chapter 23 - Sins of the Father
Dante did not walk into the guest quarters with weapons drawn. He walked in with the heavy, calculated silence of an executioner seeking the truth.
Maria was tucking Elena into a small four-poster bed in the corner of the master guest suite. A tiny pink teddy bear was nestled under the toddler’s chin, her chest rising and falling in rhythmic slumber.
When the heavy wooden door clicked shut, Maria spun around, her eyes wide with alarm. She saw Dante’s expression—cold, ruthless, stripped of all patience.
“Don Dante... what has happened?” she whispered, trembling.
“Who was Elena’s father, Maria?” Dante asked. His tone was deceptively soft, yet it rattled the crystal pendants of the chandelier above them.
Maria’s face drained of every drop of color. She backed away until her spine hit the mahogany wardrobe. “He... he was a mechanic, Don Dante. A nobody from Queens. I told you during my interview—”
“Do not lie to me again!” Dante hissed, taking two long strides toward her. The air in the room grew suffocating. “The Architect called. Julian Vance. He knows about the five million dollars paid from my father’s Swiss account four years ago. He knows about the bloodline. Speak, Maria, before I decide that your loyalty belongs to the grave!”
Tears spilled over Maria’s cheeks. She collapsed onto her knees, clasping her hands together in desperate prayer.
“Forgive me! Please, Don Dante, please! I swore on my mother’s soul I would never speak of it!” she sobbed, keeping her voice muffled so as not to wake the sleeping child. “Don Antonio... your father... he made me swear!”
Dante stood over her, his hands clenched into fists. “What did my father do?”
“Elena is not my biological child,” Maria wept, her body shaking violently. “I am her aunt! Her mother was Sophia... Sophia Vance! Julian Vance’s younger sister!”
The revelation hit the room like a concussive blast. Dante felt the floor tilt beneath his boots.
“Julian’s sister?” Dante repeated, his mind racing through years of hidden ledgers and buried family records. “Sophia Vance disappeared six years ago. The European syndicates claimed she died in a yacht explosion in Monaco.”
“It was staged!” Maria cried, clutching the hem of Dante’s trousers. “Sophia fell in love with your elder brother, Leo! They had a secret child before Leo was killed in that ambush in Palermo! Sophia died in childbirth hiding in a safehouse in Queens! Don Antonio knew the Architects would butcher the baby to erase the bastard heir to their fortune, so he hid her with me! He forged the birth certificates, paid for my protection, and told me to hide in plain sight as a domestic worker until Elena was old enough to be sent to Switzerland!”
Dante stared past Maria, his eyes landing on the tiny girl sleeping peacefully under the blankets.
Elena wasn't just a maid’s toddler who had sharp eyes.
She was Leo’s daughter.
His late brother’s flesh and blood. The true, rightful heiress not only to the Moretti throne, but to the shadowy European syndicate that claimed to rule them all.
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And her blood was running through veins that carried the deadliest war in history.
***
