A four-year-old girl innocently whispered, “Mr. Moretti…

"Bring him up," Allesandro ordered.

The command echoed through the subterranean levels of the Moretti estate—a sprawling, soundproofed bunker beneath the wine cellars that the city authorities pretended didn't exist.

Victoria sat upstairs, locked in her chambers under armed guard, though "locked" felt like a polite term for a cage. She hadn't screamed when Marcus had escorted her away. She had simply stared at Allesandro with a look of profound, chilling betrayal, as if she were the victim of an unforgivable misunderstanding.

“You’re paranoid,” she had hissed through clenched teeth as they pulled her arms back. “You see enemies everywhere because you are a monster, Allesandro! I didn't know!”

He hadn't answered her. Monsters didn't need to argue with ghosts.

Instead, he turned his wrath toward the fragile point where the outside world leaked into his fortress: the staff. Specifically, the technical contractors, the IT maintenance crew, and the private security rotation that had access to the mansion's closed-circuit grid over the past six months.

Marcus slammed a heavy iron-bound ledger onto the steel interrogation table. The room smelled of damp stone, machine oil, and old iron.

"We ran the hardware through the rig," Marcus said, his face grim, a fresh scar across his jaw pulling tight as he spoke. "It's custom-built. High-grade military civilian sweep gear. It doesn't just transmit audio and video locally—it routes through a localized relay server. Someone inside a two-mile radius has been pulling a live feed 24/7."

Allesandro leaned back against the concrete wall, rolling a heavy silver Zippo lighter between his knuckles. Click. Clack. Click.

"Who?"

"That's the problem, Boss," Marcus muttered, wiping a hand over his shaved head. "The relay node isn't outside the gates. It’s wired directly into the main fiber trunk line running through the master utility room in the west wing. To access that trunk without tripping the silent alarms, you need a master administrative bypass key."

Allesandro stopped rolling the lighter. The metal flame guard caught the harsh overhead fluorescent light, gleaming like a blade.

"How many people have a master admin key?"

"Three," Marcus said quietly. "You. Me. And..." He hesitated, swallowing hard. "...and Julian."

Julian.

The name hung in the damp air like a death sentence. Julian Vance—Allesandro’s younger brother by blood, his chief financial officer, the man who handled the legitimate fronts, the offshore accounts, and the architectural security upgrades of the estate. Julian, who had stood beside him at their father’s grave. Julian, who played chess with Lily on Sunday afternoons, letting her win every single time.

"No," Allesandro said flatly. The denial wasn't born of mercy; it was born of tactical impossibility. Betrayal by a low-level soldier was a business expense. Betrayal by a brother was an internal hemorrhage that could kill the entire empire.

"Boss, we checked the log files from the server room," Marcus said, sliding a printed data sheet across the steel table. "Last Tuesday, at 3:14 AM—while you were in Milan—an override command was punched into the west wing junction. The digital footprint matches the encrypted biometric signature assigned to Julian's private terminal."

Allesandro looked down at the paper. The numbers blurred slightly at the edges, replaced in his mind's eye by a memory: Julian, sitting on the nursery floor three weeks ago, handing a wrapped package to Lily with a warm, doting smile.

“Happy early birthday, sweetheart. Uncle Julian knows you love blue.”