The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 09

The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 09

The room went cold.

“Explain,” Katya said sharply, lawyer’s calm cracking for the first time since I’d met her.

“Camilla found the contract six weeks into the honeymoon – her lawyers were crawling through my grandfather’s estate for the prenup. When she learned I had a legal wife and hidden children, she didn’t rage. She didn’t even mention it to me for a month.” Dante’s voice was flat, the voice of a man reading his own autopsy. “She studied it. Then she went to her father.”

“And Marco Russo saw an opportunity,” I said.

“The opportunity of a generation. Expose the bigamy at the sit-down – my alliance dies, my honor dies, the Families abandon me, and the Russos absorb my territory as ‘compensation for the insult: Clean. Almost legal, by our laws.” He laughed, hollow. “She leaked your name to the tabloids for a different reason. To smoke you out. A gold digger nobody believes is a gold digger nobody protects. But a legitimate first wife with legitimate heirs-” his jaw tightened, “-my daughters are a claim, Aria. Under the old codes, Luna and Stella have blood rights to everything the Russos want to take. As long as they breathe, the Moretti empire isn’t

Camilla’s to inherit.”

The implication settled over me like ice water.

“She wouldn’t touch infants,” Katya said. “Even in your world, there are lines.”

“Marco Russo buried those lines in the eighties,” Dante said. “Three days ago, my last loyal man inside their organization sent me a single text before he disappeared. An address.” His eyes found mine. “This address.”

The silence was absolute.

“That’s why you stood in the rain,” I said slowly. “Not for a conversation. You came to warn us.”

‘I came because I couldn’t make myself call your grandfather like a coward. Because some warnings your deliver standing up, looking at the person you failed.” He dragged a hand through his hair, dismantling its careful order. “Nikolai’s security is the best in the country. Better than mine ever was. But the Russos don’t need to breach a fortress. They need one moment – one pediatrician appointment, one walk in the park, one nurse with a sick mother and a gambling brother. I know how it’s done, Aria. I’ve ordered how it’s done.”

That admission hung in the air, ugly and honest.

“Why should I believe you?” I asked. “You’ve lied to me for three years. By omission, by silence, by treating lies

as kindness. Why is today different?”

Dante reached slowly into his jacket – three Volkov men shifted instantly and laid a flash drive on the

table.

“Every Russo asset I know. Their men, their judges, their routes, their accounts Twenty years of intelligarca my family bled to gather.” He slid it across. “Give it to your grandfather It’s everything he needs to end them in a month instead of a year. It’s also a death sentence for me if the Families learn I gave it up.” He sat back Tm not asking you to believe my words. Believe the noose I just put around my own neck.”

Katya picked up the drive like it was radioactive. Upstairs, faintly, one of the twins began to cry – Stella, by the pitch. I watched Dante’s head turn toward the sound, watched his whole body lean toward it involuntarily. like a compass finding north, before he forced himself still.

He had never even heard them cry before.

“The conversation isn’t over,” I said, standing. “But we’re done for today.”

He rose, obedient in a way that would have been unimaginable three months ago, and paused at the door.

“Aria. Whatever you decide about me – let me put my men in the gutter with your grandfather’s. Let me die on

the right door for once.”

“I’ll consider it,” I said. “And Dante?”

He turned.

“Tomorrow, when you come back – bring photographs of yourself as a boy.”

He blinked. “Why?”

“Because my daughters should know where they come from,” I said. “All of it. Even the parts that failed them.”

Something cracked across his face – an emotion so raw and unguarded I almost looked away.

He nodded once and walked out into the rain.

That night, my grandfather read the flash drive in silence, then looked up at me with winter in his eyes.

“The Russos move within the week,” he said. “So we move tomorrow.”