Alessia POV

The echo of the second slap hung in the heavy, cigar-scented air of the office. Dante's face remained turned, a thin red line from the sharp edge of my diamond ring slowly welling with a single drop of blood.

I didn't flinch. I didn't step back. Instead, I slowly lowered my hand and rested it flat against my lower abdomen.

"I am carrying your heir, Dante," I said, my voice slicing through the silence like a blade. "The next Don of the Moretti family."

From the floor, Bianca gasped, the color instantly draining from her face as the reality of my words shattered her delusions. Dante’s head snapped back to me. The violent storm in his pitch-black eyes froze, replaced by a shock so profound it momentarily stripped away his ruthless facade.

I held his gaze, refusing to let him look away. "If I walk out of this building without your protection, our enemies will put a bullet in my head before I reach the street. Is that the legacy you want for your son? To be born in a coffin? Is that the Vendetta you want to start over my dead body?"

Dante's jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter. The Don in him—the absolute ruler sworn to protect his bloodline and avoid senseless war—warred with his pride. For the first time, his resolve to banish me fractured.

I didn't wait for his permission. I had delivered my ultimatum. I turned on my heel and marched toward the heavy oak doors.

Before my hand could even brush the brass handle, a massive hand clamped around my arm. Dante yanked me backward, his broad chest hitting my spine.

"So that's your play?" he hissed, his voice a low, furious rumble against my ear. "Using my son—my blood—to blackmail me?"

The accusation felt like a poisoned dagger twisting in my chest. He still thought the worst of me. I ripped my arm from his iron grip, turning to meet his lethal glare with absolute ice.

"I'm not using my child, Dante," I corrected him, my tone dead and hollow. "I'm using my life. There's a difference."

I didn't look back as I walked out of his sanctuary. At the threshold, Leo Falcone, Dante’s imposing Capo and head of security, stood like a stone sentinel. He had heard everything. As I brushed past him into the dim corridor, I heard Leo’s low, gravelly voice murmur into the office.

"Don, she is pregnant. You cannot let her leave alone."

The gray marble corridor felt suffocating, the heavy carpet absorbing the sound of my trembling footsteps. I just needed to get to my room. But a shadow stepped into my path, blocking my way.

Bianca. She had slipped out right after me, her eyes burning with toxic jealousy and a desperate need to win.

"Packing your bags, sister?" she sneered, crossing her arms in a pathetic display of triumph. "A Rinaldi will always be a Rinaldi. You don't have the stomach to be a Moretti Queen."

I stopped, looking at her not with anger, but with profound pity and disgust. She had no idea what world she was trying to play in.

"Perhaps Dante can keep you," I replied, my voice dripping with aristocratic disdain. "Every Don needs a whore for the nights his wife is otherwise occupied."

Her smug expression shattered. I turned my back on her, dismissing her entirely, and continued down the hall. It was the ultimate insult to a narcissist.

Behind me, a feral shriek tore through the quiet corridor.

"You bitch! Go to hell!"

Two hands slammed violently into my spine. The sheer force of the shove caught me completely off guard. My feet slipped on the thick carpet, my center of gravity failing as I pitched forward toward the unforgiving marble floor.

In that exact split second, the heavy oak doors of the office swung wide open, and Dante stepped out into the corridor.

Alessia POV

The floor rushed up to meet me. I braced for the crushing impact, my hands instinctively flying to my stomach to shield my unborn child.

But the impact never came.

A massive arm wrapped around my waist like a band of steel, jerking me backward with terrifying speed. I crashed into a wall of solid, burning muscle. Dante. His familiar scent—cedar, expensive tobacco, and pure, unadulterated violence—enveloped me.

He didn't just move; he erupted.

Before I could even catch my breath, Dante lunged. His large hand clamped around Bianca’s throat. With a guttural snarl, he lifted her entirely off her feet and slammed her against the gray marble wall. The sickening thud echoed down the corridor.

Bianca’s eyes bulged in sheer terror. She clawed frantically at his iron grip, her legs kicking at the empty air as her face rapidly turned a mottled purple. Dante’s pitch-black eyes held no mercy, only the hellfire of a Don whose bloodline had just been threatened.

I steadied myself, smoothing down my dress. I looked at the pathetic creature dangling from my husband's hand, feeling nothing but absolute ice in my veins.

"Attacking the pregnant wife of a Don..." I said, my voice echoing in the deadly silence. "You just signed your own death warrant, sister."

Dante released his grip. Bianca collapsed to the carpet like a broken doll, gasping greedily for air. Realizing the sheer magnitude of her mistake, she crawled toward Dante, her tears ruining her makeup as she clutched at the hem of his tailored trousers.

"Dante, please! It was an accident! She insulted me first!" she babbled hysterically.

Dante stared down at her as if she were a disease. Seeing that her pathetic pleas were met with a lethal, unblinking glare, Bianca’s eyes fluttered shut, and she slumped to the floor in a feigned faint. It was her classic, manipulative pity ploy.

Dante let out a dark, mocking sneer. Leo Falcone, having rushed down the hall, stood at attention.

"Take this trash to the basement cells," Dante ordered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "I'll deal with her after I've made sure my wife is fine."

Leo didn't hesitate. He grabbed Bianca by the arms and dragged her limp body down the corridor like a sack of garbage. Dante turned to me. The murderous rage in his eyes was still simmering, but beneath it, I saw a raw, undeniable flash of concern.

He escorted me back to my bedroom in heavy silence. Once inside, I sat on the edge of the mattress and raised a trembling hand, stopping him from coming any closer. His jaw clenched, but he respected the boundary, turning on his heel to leave and handle the fallout of the attack.

The moment the heavy door clicked shut, the adrenaline crashed.

The silence of the penthouse deafened me. My breathing turned ragged as the near-death experience tore down the mental walls I had built. Memories I had suppressed—memories of my *past* life—clawed their way to the surface with violent clarity.

I remembered the freezing rain. The filthy alleyway where I had bled out, losing my baby after Dante had ruthlessly banished me. But now, the missing pieces of the puzzle finally snapped into place.

Dante hadn't banished me out of cruelty. He was losing his mind.

The slow-acting neurotoxin. I remembered the whispers that had shaken the New York underworld years later. Dante, completely consumed by the poison's madness, had attacked Salvatore, The Patriarch, during a high-stakes Commission meeting. Dante was executed on the spot like a rabid dog.

And the victors? His brother Lorenzo and my sister Bianca, hailed as the heroes who subdued the mad Don. I saw the phantom image of Isabella Moretti, Dante's mother, placing the Don's ring on her biological son Lorenzo's finger, while Bianca smiled triumphantly beside him.

They had built their throne on the corpses of my husband and my unborn child.

Dante was never the traitor. He was their first victim.

The bitter hatred I had harbored for him dissolved, replaced by a fierce, bleeding ache in my chest. He was fighting a war inside his own mind, poisoned by the woman he called mother.

I slowly stood up from the bed, wiping away a single, stray tear. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating fury. I couldn't just wait for the poison to take him. I had to dismantle their network, piece by piece, starting with the weakest link.

Alessia POV

I stood in the center of the bedroom, the phantom echoes of my past life fading into the cold reality of the present. The tears were gone. In their place, a glacial resolve settled over my bones. I couldn't save Dante by cowering in this penthouse. I had to sever the limbs of Isabella's conspiracy, starting with the rot in my own bloodline.

I pressed the intercom button on the wall. "Lucia. Silvana. In here. Now."

Within seconds, my personal maid and my lead female bodyguard entered the room. I didn't give them a chance to ask about the commotion in the hallway.

"Lucia, fetch the black tailored suit. The one with the sharpest cut," I ordered, my voice devoid of any tremor. "Silvana, ready the motorcade. We are leaving."

As Lucia hurried to the walk-in closet, I caught my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. My face was slightly softened by the pregnancy, but my eyes were entirely different. They were the eyes of a woman who had died and crawled her way back from hell.

Lucia helped me into the dark, structured blazer. It felt like armor. I looked at the two women who served me, my posture rigid and unyielding.

"We're going home," I told them, my tone leaving no room for hesitation. "It's time to teach my father's other family some manners."

The drive from Manhattan to Long Island was a blur of gray skies and calculating silence. The armored Cadillac motorcade, a blatant display of Moretti power, rolled through the wrought-iron gates of the Rinaldi estate. The gaudy, gold-leafed architecture of my father's house had always reeked of new money and desperate vanity. Today, it would serve as a courtroom.

I bypassed the frantic greetings of the estate staff and ordered everyone—family and servants alike—into the Grand Foyer.

I took the high-backed velvet armchair at the head of the room, a seat usually reserved for my father, Ernesto. He was conveniently absent, likely hiding in his study or out managing his petty rackets. My mother, Elenora Visconti, sat rigidly beside me. Her aristocratic features were tight with confusion, but she maintained the flawless poise of a woman born into mafia royalty.

The foyer was suffocatingly quiet. Dozens of eyes darted nervously toward me and the heavily armed Moretti guards flanking the doors.

I let the silence stretch, letting their anxiety fester, before I finally spoke.

"My half-sister, Bianca Rinaldi, has committed an act of war against the Moretti family," I announced. My voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the heavy air like a straight razor.

A collective gasp rippled through the servants. My mother stiffened, her head snapping toward me.

I met her gaze briefly before sweeping my eyes over the crowd. "She attempted to murder my unborn child—the heir to the Moretti family. She did this to usurp my position as Mafia Queen."

The accusation detonated in the room. This was no longer a petty domestic squabble; it was a death sentence. The color drained entirely from my mother’s face, leaving behind a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. The Visconti blood in her veins boiled at the sheer disrespect.

She reached out, her trembling fingers gripping my hand with surprising strength. "This family will not tolerate such a betrayal," Elenora said, her voice vibrating with a lethal edge. "We will have justice."

Before the weight of her words could fully settle, a frantic figure shoved through the line of terrified maids. Carina. My father’s mistress and Bianca’s mother.

She threw herself onto the marble floor, her face streaked with panicked tears. "No! It’s a lie! Bianca is innocent! There must be a misunderstanding, Alessia, please!"

I looked down at her, feeling nothing but absolute disdain. "Oh? And where is she now, if she's so innocent?"

Carina swallowed hard, her eyes darting wildly as she grasped at the first desperate lie she could think of. "She's been in her room all day! She never left!"

A dark, mocking smirk touched my lips. I leaned forward slightly, letting my words drop like stones. "That's impossible. She is currently a guest in my husband's basement cells, awaiting his judgment."

The wailing stopped instantly. Carina froze, the blood rushing from her face as the horrific reality of the basement cells dawned on her. She opened her mouth to speak, to beg, but the sound died in her throat.

Beside me, my mother stood up. The years of enduring this woman's presence under her roof culminated in a single, icy glare.

"Carina," Elenora commanded, her voice echoing with the absolute authority of the true Matriarch. "On your knees. You do not speak unless spoken to in this house."