Chapter 4 - THE SISTER'S BETRAYAL
The roar of the burning house was deafening, but all I could hear was the rushing blood in my ears.
Chloe.
My little sister. The girl I had sent half my paycheck to every month. The girl I had sworn to protect after our father died.
She was the leak. She was the one who had sold Matteo’s daughter to a monster.
"Chloe, wait!" I screamed, lunging forward into the wet grass.
But she didn't wait. She turned and ran into the dark woods, disappearing into the thick pine trees before I could reach her.
"Let her go, Clara," Matteo’s voice commanded.
I spun around. Matteo was standing up, holding a terrified Elara tightly against his hip. His face was a mask of soot, rain, and absolute, terrifying clarity.
"She's my sister!" I cried, pointing into the dark woods. "She doesn't know what she's involved in! Julian will kill her!"
"Julian already used her," Matteo said coldly, turning away from the burning house. "Which means she is expendable to him. We have to move. The fire will draw the police, and Julian’s men won't be far behind."
"I can't just leave her!"
Matteo stopped and turned back to me. His dark eyes were empty of the vulnerability I had seen just moments before. The mafia boss had returned.
"Your sister sold my daughter’s life to buy her own," Matteo said, his voice lowering to a dangerous rumble. "If she steps in front of me again, I won't ask for an explanation. Get in the car."
I stared at him, the cold reality of his world finally sinking its teeth into me.
I wasn't a maid witnessing a drama anymore. I was a target in a war.
I swallowed the sob rising in my throat, turned, and ran back to the sedan.
We drove through the night, leaving the burning farmhouse and my sister’s betrayal behind us. Elara cried herself to sleep in the backseat, clutching a soot-stained teddy bear against her chest.
Matteo didn't speak for two hours. He drove with white-knuckled intensity, taking backroads and avoiding tolls.
"Where are we going?" I finally asked, my voice hoarse.
"A safe house in Providence," Matteo replied, his eyes scanning the mirrors constantly. "Only three people in the world know it exists. Julian isn't one of them."
"Why did my sister have your daughter?" I asked, the question burning a hole in my chest. "How did Chloe become the nanny?"
"I hired her through an agency two years ago," Matteo said, a bitter edge to his voice. "Her background check was flawless. She needed money for your mother’s medical bills. I gave her the job."
He looked at me, a muscle feathering in his jaw.
"It was three months before you applied to work at my estate, Clara. I didn't know you were sisters until tonight."
I felt sick.
Julian hadn't just discovered Elara recently. He had been planning this for years. He had used my sister’s desperation, knowing it would give him the ultimate leverage when the time came.
"He played us," I whispered, resting my head against the cold glass of the window. "All of us."
We arrived at the safe house just before dawn.
It was a heavily fortified brownstone in an old industrial neighborhood. Matteo unlocked the heavy steel door, carrying a sleeping Elara inside.
The house was cold, smelling of dust and stale air. But it was secure.
Matteo laid Elara gently on a bed in the back room, pulling a heavy quilt over her. He stood in the doorway for a long time, watching her sleep.
When he walked back into the main living room, he looked exhausted. The sharp lines of his face were drawn tight, the weight of the last twelve hours finally catching up to him.
"Get some rest, Clara," Matteo said, walking toward a heavy metal gun safe in the corner. "Tomorrow night, I meet Julian at the shipyard."
"You can't go," I said instantly, stepping toward him. "You said it yourself, he'll kill you the second you sign the transition papers."
"If I don't go, he will hunt us until he kills Elara," Matteo replied, spinning the dial on the safe. The heavy door clicked open, revealing an arsenal of weaponry. "I have to end this."
"By handing him the empire?"
Matteo pulled a sleek, black assault rifle from the safe and slapped a magazine onto the table.
"I am not handing him an empire, Clara," Matteo said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, lethal calm. "I am handing him a war."
He spent the next hour cleaning and loading weapons. I watched him from the worn leather sofa, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking about Chloe running into the dark woods.
Suddenly, Matteo’s encrypted burner phone buzzed on the coffee table.
It wasn't a call. It was a text message.
Matteo picked it up, reading the screen. His jaw tightened so hard I thought his teeth might crack.
"What is it?" I asked, sitting up.
Matteo didn't answer. He turned the phone around so I could see the screen.
It was a picture.
Chloe was sitting in a wooden chair in an abandoned warehouse. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back. She looked terrified, a dark bruise swelling under her left eye.
Standing behind her, holding his cracked gold pocket watch to the camera, was Julian.
Beneath the picture was a single line of text.
The maid's sister for the transition papers. Tonight. Bring the girl.
My breath left my lungs in a violent rush.
"He has her," I panicked, jumping up from the sofa. "Matteo, he has my sister."
Matteo stared at the phone, his face an impenetrable mask of stone.
"He is using her as bait," Matteo said coldly. "He knows I won't trade Elara for your sister. He wants you to panic. He wants you to try and save her, so he can use you against me."
"I have to go to the shipyard," I said, my voice trembling but finding a new, harder edge. "I have to trade myself for her."
"You aren't trading anything!" Matteo snapped, stepping in front of me, his physical presence overwhelming in the small room. "If you walk into that shipyard, he will kill you both just to punish me for making him wait."
"Then what do we do?!" I screamed, the tears finally falling. "She's my sister, Matteo! She's the only family I have left!"
Matteo looked down at me. He saw the desperation, the absolute terror tearing me apart.
He reached out and gently gripped my shoulders, grounding me in his strength.
"We are going to the shipyard," Matteo said, his voice steady, carrying a promise of violence that terrified me. "But we are not negotiating."
He turned and walked back to the table, picking up a heavy, Kevlar tactical vest.
He threw it onto the sofa next to me.
"Put that on," Matteo ordered. "And pray you remember how to use a gun."
Before I could process what he was asking me to do, the silence of the safe house was shattered by a massive, deafening explosion.
The front door blew inward, ripping off its hinges in a shower of sparks, smoke, and splintered steel.
The shockwave threw me backward over the sofa.
My ears rang violently. Dust and smoke choked the air, blinding me.
Through the haze, I saw three heavily armed men step through the destroyed doorway.
But it wasn't Julian's men.
The man leading the assault team lowered his rifle, stepping over the debris. He was older, his hair peppered with gray, wearing a dark suit that cost more than my life.
He looked around the destroyed room, his eyes finally locking onto Matteo, who was already raising his rifle.
"Stand down, Matteo," the older man commanded, his voice carrying the absolute authority of a king.
Matteo froze, his finger hovering over the trigger.
"Uncle Lorenzo?" Matteo whispered in absolute shock.
Lorenzo Romano, the patriarch of the family, the man who had supposedly retired to Italy five years ago, stood in the center of the smoke.
"You've made a mess, boy," Lorenzo said coldly.
May you like
He turned his gaze toward me, and a cruel, knowing smile spread across his face.
"And I see you finally found the Rossi girl."
