Isabella POV
Carmella's shrill voice sliced through the groans of the dying and the crackle of burning debris. From the suffocating safety of the shadowed corridor, I watched the matriarch of the Marshall family unravel.
"She planned this!" Carmella shrieked, her manicured finger trembling as she pointed at the ruined, soot-covered woman on the second stretcher. "She lured your husband here, Catarina! That whore betrayed us all!"
Catarina Casey stood amidst the shattered crystal and blood-stained Persian rugs like a marble statue of vengeance. She glanced at her husband, Hoy, whose chest barely rose beneath his shredded suit, and then turned her piercing gaze back to Carmella. Catarina's eyes were chips of blue ice. She didn't care if Carmella's hysterical narrative was the absolute truth; she only cared that Casey blood had been spilled on Marshall territory. She needed a sanctioned target for her Vendetta.
"Is that so?" Catarina's voice was dangerously quiet, carrying the lethal weight of the Zetta and Casey families combined. "If your daughter-in-law is the architect of this treason, Carmella, then I expect you to handle your trash. Give her to my Enforcers now, or I will burn this entire estate to the ground with you in it."
Around them, the surviving guests—Capos, Soldiers, and representatives of allied families—exchanged dark, murmuring glances. They weren't looking at a tragedy; they were looking at weakness. The Marshall family was bleeding out, exposing their incompetence to the wolves of Chicago.
It was time.
I squeezed Adrienne's arm. Now.
I let my knees buckle slightly, forcing my maid to bear the brunt of my weight. Together, we stepped out of the darkness and into the harsh, flickering glare of the emergency lights. The crunch of shattered glass under my heels sounded like gunshots in the tense atmosphere.
Heads snapped toward the archway.
The whispers died instantly. The Grand Foyer plunged into a suffocating, graveyard silence.
Carmella's mouth was still open, a fresh insult dying on her tongue. Her eyes bulged, darting wildly from my pale, soot-smudged face to the ruined woman on the stretcher, and back again. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like a corpse.
I kept my expression a flawless mask of trembling shock and profound trauma. Leaning heavily on Adrienne, I walked slowly toward the center of the room. The sea of mafia elite parted for me, their eyes wide with confusion and dawning horror.
I stopped just a few feet away from my mother-in-law. I looked at her not with hatred, but with the hollow, exhausted eyes of a victim who had barely survived hell.
"Carmella," I said. My voice was barely above a whisper, yet in the dead silence of the foyer, it rang out with chilling clarity. "You are accusing the wrong woman."
As the words left my lips, a Marshall Soldier standing guard near the stretchers shifted his stance. The heavy beam of his tactical flashlight swept downward, cutting through the smoky haze and landing directly on the second stretcher.
The harsh light illuminated the unconscious woman's face. The blood and thick layer of ash couldn't hide the bone structure. It couldn't hide the remnants of the custom emerald gown that Carmella herself had purchased for her beloved daughter just a week ago.
It wasn't me.
It was Adina.
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The realization hit the room like a physical shockwave. In front of the most powerful figures in Chicago's underworld, Carmella Marshall had just viciously condemned her own flesh and blood, branding her daughter a traitor and a whore who slept with a rival boss.
Carmella's knees gave out. She collapsed onto the ruined floor, her hands clawing at her own throat as a soundless scream tore from her lips, her eyes locked on Adina's battered face.
