Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 06

Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 06 A Family Secret

Celeste’s POV:

Silence stretched across the line.

Alessio had clearly never imagined that the woman who always yielded would sever the engagement without hesitation.

Several seconds passed before he gave a cold laugh. “Fine. Leave if that is what you want. I will not stop you.”

“But you will regret it, Celeste. Once you are stranded in Bellamont with no family and nowhere else to turn, you will come begging to me.”

He hung up before I could answer.

His warning did not trouble me. I simply erased every photograph of him from my phone.

Alessio assumed I had acted on impulse and could not survive alone. None of them knew how long I had been preparing.

After the warehouse, I hired a private investigator named Davide Sarto to uncover the truth about Bianca’s birth.

I had only wanted to understand why my parents defended her without limit. What Davide found went far beyond favoritism.

From the day I saw his report, I began building an exit of my own.

Father had placed the family’s hotels and vineyards under my management for years. That experience was more than enough to earn a position in Bellamont.

On my third day in the city, I walked into the offices of Bellori & Finch.

The firm had no business ties to either the Valdieris or the Rinaldis.

We had worked together on a cross-border acquisition two years earlier. At the

time, Mr. Bellori told me there would always be a place for me if I chose to leave the family.

I had taken it for professional courtesy.

Two years later, it became the first solid step into my new life.

Night had fallen by the time I finished settling in and returned to my apartment.

My phone lit up.

The message came from Elena Corsini, the family’s longtime private physician, who had attended the engagement party.

“Celeste, you should have seen their faces!”

A video was attached beneath the message.

On-screen, the engagement photographs had disappeared from the ballroom display. In their place was an old file Davide had given me.

It contained an audio recording made more than twenty years ago.

Father’s voice carried clearly through the ballroom speakers.

“Send Renato’s route for tomorrow night to the rival crew.”

A second man hesitated. “Renato has served you for more than a decade, and many of the men are loyal to him. If they learn you leaked the route, the family could fracture.”

Father showed no emotion.

“Then they must never learn.”

“After Renato is dead, I will adopt his daughter myself. Who would accuse a man caring for his fallen brother’s child of arranging the murder?”

The recording ended there.

Next came the route map, several suspicious wire transfers, and the call log from the night before Renato was ambushed.

Renato was Bianca’s biological father and had once been Father’s most trusted lieutenant.

Father leaked his movements to eliminate a threat, then adopted Bianca to conceal the betrayal.

That guilt was the true source of my parents’ endless indulgence.

The ballroom fell silent.

Mother stood rigid, every trace of color gone from her face.

Bianca stared at the screen, trembling uncontrollably.

And the presentation was not over.