Chapter 3 - The Traidor in the Nursery
Isabella Moretti-Valente sat rigidly on a velvet chair in the center of the drawing room, her hands tightly clutching a designer handbag as if it were a life raft. Her face was pale, her immaculate blonde hair slightly frizzed from panic.
"Why am I being held in here like a common criminal, Roman?" Isabella demanded the moment Roman and Mara walked into the room, flanked by Salvatore. "That maid is a hysterical nobody! She’s spinning stories to get attention—or worse, she planted that cake herself!"
Roman walked slowly toward her, his shadow swallowing the small space of the room. He didn't speak. He reached down, grabbed Isabella’s left wrist with lightning speed, and turned it over.
Sitting snugly on her wrist was a silver charm bracelet. Hanging from it was a small, delicate blue enamel butterfly with a tiny diamond chip in the center.
Isabella gasped, trying to jerk her arm away. "Let me go! What is this?!"
"Sophia’s bracelet," Roman said quietly, his voice dangerously low. "The one she lost behind the radiator in the west wing. The one you told me three days ago 'probably fell down the storm drain outside.'"
Isabella’s breath hitched. "I—I found it! I found it on the floor in the hallway this morning and forgot to give it back to her! It was an accident!"
"People don't accidentally switch bracelets with a seven-year-old child to frame her for wearing the wrong jewelry," Mara stepped forward, her voice ringing clear and sharp in the quiet room. "And people don't accidentally slip a duplicate bracelet into the nursery drawer to cover up a missing item unless they were trying to impersonate her, or distract someone from noticing who had access to her room."
Isabella glared at Mara with pure, unadulterated venom. "Shut your mouth, you filthy servant! You are nothing! You clean toilets! You don't speak to me!"
"She speaks when I tell her to speak," Roman roared, slamming his hand down on the mahogany table. The sharp crack made Isabella flinch violently.
Roman leaned down, his face inches from hers. "You wanted control of the Valente estate trust fund, Isabella. With Ethan dead and Sophia dead, my brother’s widow—you—would have inherited the primary voting shares of the holding company. You thought you could outsmart me."
"I didn't—!" Isabella sobbed, the facade finally shattering completely. "I didn't know it was poison! They just said it would make her sick—just enough to hospitalize her so you'd be distracted from the shipping board vote tomorrow!"
"Who is 'they'?" Roman demanded, his fingers tightening around her arm until she cried out in pain.
"The Vanguard Syndicate," Isabella whimpered, tears streaming down her painted cheeks. "Viktor Vance... he promised me a stake in the port authority if I helped them infiltrate the security rota..."
May you like
Roman straightened up slowly, his face turning into a mask of pure, lethal granite. He looked at Salvatore. "Lock her in the lower vault. Nobody speaks to her. Nobody feeds her. Let her think about what she traded her soul for."
As Salvatore dragged a screaming Isabella out of the room, Roman turned back to Mara. The adrenaline had faded, leaving behind the heavy, suffocating reality of a war that had just breached his front door.
