Chapter 2 - The Loop of Betrayal
Dante stepped right behind her oversized chair, leaning in closely to inspect the screen. The heavy brass hardware of the desk felt cold against his knuckles as he braced his weight.
He stared at the center monitor. At first glance, everything looked perfectly normal. The maid pushed her cart past the marble columns of his private corridor. But Dante’s dark eyes, trained to catch the smallest inconsistencies, narrowed.
Suddenly, the black-and-white surveillance footage glitched. The digital timecode in the bottom right corner hesitated, repeated the same three seconds, and then violently jumped forward by twenty minutes. The maid on the screen seamlessly returned to her starting position, wiping the same invisible spot on the wall.
“It’s a recorded loop...” Dante muttered, a dark, venomous realization washing over his sharp features.
His mind raced. Only two people in the world had the encryption keys to alter his penthouse security matrix. One was himself. The other was Victor, his second-in-command, the man he had called a brother for fifteen years.
If the cameras were looped, Dante was totally blind. The impenetrable fortress he had spent millions building had just become a steel coffin.
He reached for the master switch on the console to reboot the entire mainframe and trigger the physical blast doors.
“Please, sir,” Elara pleaded, her voice barely above a whisper, her small hand reaching out to hover over his wrist. “Don’t turn it off.”
Dante paused. He looked down at the tiny girl in the oversized cardigan. Her natural acting, the realistic micro-expressions of pure terror mixed with a bizarre maturity, made him stop. She wasn't just a random child. She knew exactly what was happening.
His dark eyes narrowed with cold, calculated fury. He scanned the rest of the dark monitors, realizing the true threat wasn't the child in his chair, but the blind spot she had just revealed.
“Who else is inside my house?” Dante asked, his voice intense and deadly quiet.
Elara finally turned her head to look up at the towering crime boss. Her wide, innocent eyes met his with a haunting, mature calmness. There was a subtle, powerful pause before she answered.
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“The people who took my mother.”
👉 Who is Elara's mother, and why did Victor's men kidnap her?
