Chapter 2 - The Taste of Truth
The silence in the nursery was deafening. Elena stood slowly, carefully tucking Leo back into his bassinet as if she were handling a holy relic. She didn't look at the gun; she looked at me, her eyes deep, dark, and filled with a pain that felt older than her years.
"I didn't come to hurt him," she said, her voice steadying. "I came because I saw him. I saw his mother's face in his."
"You knew Isabella?" I asked, my finger tightening on the trigger.
"I grew up in the same village as she did," Elena replied. "Before she was a Rossi. Before she was a trophy in your cage. She was my cousin."
The revelation hit me like a physical blow. Isabella had never mentioned a cousin. She had never spoken of her childhood in the village, only of her dreams of a life in America.
"You're lying," I said, though my gut told me otherwise. "Isabella was an orphan. She had no family."
"That is what she told you to keep you from digging," Elena whispered. "She knew that if you knew her lineage, you would understand where she came from—and why she was desperate to escape it. But that isn't why I’m here. I’m here because your son is dying, Lorenzo. Not because of a sickness. He’s dying because of what is in his blood."
I lowered the gun an inch, my confusion warring with my suspicion. "What are you talking about?"
"He has a rare condition," Elena said, stepping closer, indifferent to the weapon. "In our village, it’s not treated with medicine. It’s treated with legacy. His body is rejecting modern nutrition because it requires the biological connection to his line. He didn't need your doctors, Lorenzo. He needed his own people."
I looked at Leo. He looked healthier than he had in days. The gray tinge to his skin was fading, replaced by a faint, healthy pink.
"You're telling me," I said, my voice dripping with skepticism, "that a biological connection to a cousin is the only thing keeping him alive?"
"I’m telling you that your mansion is a prison," she said sharply. "And your son is a prisoner. You keep him surrounded by sterile air, by guards who hate him, by men who want you dead. He feels it. He’s a Rossi, and a Rossi thrives on fire, not on antiseptic."
I looked at her, searching for the crack in her facade, but found none. "Who sent you? Was it the Moretti family? Are you trying to infiltrate my house to weaken me?"
She let out a bitter, sad laugh. "Do you really think the Morettis care about a dying baby? They want you gone, yes. But they want you to suffer while you watch him die. That’s why your security hasn't found the real threat yet. Because they are looking for men with guns, not for the poison in the pantry."
My eyes narrowed. "Poison?"
"Check the formula, Lorenzo," she said. "The one your doctors swear by. The one that arrived three weeks ago, shortly after your wife's funeral arrangements were settled."
I holstered my weapon, but I didn't holster my distrust. "If you are lying, I will make sure you wish you’d never been born."
"I am already in hell, Lorenzo," she replied. "I’m in your house."
I walked out of the room, leaving two guards at the door with orders to shoot if she even twitched. I went straight to the private lab in the basement, taking the sealed canisters of formula. I didn't trust my own doctors—they were on the payroll, they were chosen by Marco.
I grabbed a sample and walked, not to my staff, but to an old contact—a chemist in the city who owed me a debt he couldn't pay with money.
When the results came back two hours later, I didn't feel rage. I felt a cold, dead hollow where my soul used to be.
The formula was laced with a slow-acting neurotoxin. It didn't kill immediately. It starved the body of nutrients, causing a slow, painful wasting.
It was designed to kill a Rossi heir, inch by inch, while the world watched him suffer.
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And the shipment had been authorized by the only person I trusted more than myself.
Marco.
