Dante Moretti POV
The video looped on my phone screen, a silent, sickening rhythm.
It was grainy, pulled from a security feed in a VIP room at The Red Room—Bratva territory. But the faces were clear enough to ruin me.
Lucia.
She wasn’t bound. She wasn’t gasping for breath in the throes of an asthma attack. She was laughing. Her head was thrown back, her throat exposed in joy, her hand resting intimately on the thigh of a man who wasn't me.
It was Marco. And across from them sat Vanya, the Bratva lieutenant who had negotiated the trade for Seraphina.
The timestamp was dated three weeks before the kidnapping.
I sat in my car outside the penthouse. The engine had gone cold, but it was nothing compared to the arctic chill settling in my veins.
I had traded my wife for this.
I had watched Seraphina scream as the Russians dragged her away. I had watched her fall from the roof. I had watched her crawl on the floor of the chapel, broken and bleeding.
All to protect a woman who was currently upstairs, likely wrapped in silk, ordering room service, and crafting her next perfect lie.
I didn't feel heartbreak. Heartbreak implied love, and what I felt was far more destructive. I felt a tectonic shift in my reality. The ground I stood on—my honor, my judgment, my legacy—dissolved into a sinkhole of absolute humiliation.
I opened the car door. I didn't slam it. I moved with the terrifying, quiet calm of a man walking toward an execution.
I signaled the two guards by the entrance. They were loyal to the Vitiello bloodline, not to Lucia.
"Bring him." I gestured to the trunk.
They didn't ask questions. They hauled Marco out. His kneecap was shattered, his face a ruin from the work I’d done on him at the factory.
We took the private elevator. The numbers climbed. 10. 20. 30. Each chime was a countdown.
The doors slid open.
Lucia was in the living room. She had changed into a white silk robe, looking like a pristine angel. She was pacing, holding a glass of water. When she saw me, her face crumpled into a mask of relief so perfect, so practiced, it made bile rise in my throat.
"Dante!" she cried, rushing forward. "Did you find her? Did you pay them?"
I stepped aside. She stumbled, nearly losing her balance.
"Sit down," I said.
She froze. "What?"
"Sit. Down."
She sank onto the edge of the beige sofa, her eyes darting to the guards dragging a bleeding mass into her sanctuary. Marco groaned, leaving a streak of crimson on the imported marble floor.
"Dante, why is Marco here? He's hurt!"
"He fell," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "Just like you fell out of bed. Just like Seraphina fell off the roof. There is a lot of gravity in this family tonight."
I took my phone out and cast the video to the massive television screen on the wall.
Lucia's recorded laughter filled the room, a ghostly echo mocking the silence. The image of her kissing Marco, then clinking glasses with the Russian, loomed over us.
Lucia went pale. Not the pretty, faint pallor she used to garner sympathy. This was the gray, clammy skin of a corpse.
"It's a deepfake!" she blurted out, her voice shrill. "Seraphina made it! She has friends in tech. She's trying to frame me!"
I looked at her. Really looked at her. I saw the greed in her eyes. The calculation.
"Seraphina has no friends in tech," I said quietly. "Seraphina had no friends at all. Because I isolated her. For you."
I walked over to Marco. I kicked his broken knee.
He screamed. It was a wet, gurgling sound.
"Tell her," I commanded.
"It was her idea," Marco wheezed, spitting blood onto the rug. "The Bratva trade. She set it up with Vanya. She wanted the legit wife gone so she could be the Don's lady."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bones.
"You traded Seraphina to the Russians," I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. "It wasn't a hostage situation. It was a transaction."
Lucia stood up, desperate. "He's lying! He's jealous because I chose you!"
"You didn't choose me," I said, staring into the void where her heart should have been. "You chose the crown."
