Chapter 5 - The Inside Betrayal
"I had to!" Clara screamed, completely abandoning her elegant persona as tears of pure, agonizing terror flooded her eyes. "You think the rival cartel burned my apartment, Dante? You think they just randomly found me?"
Dante frowned, his jaw clenching tight. "The police report said—"
"The police were paid off!" Clara interrupted fiercely, clutching Sophie’s hand behind her back. "It wasn't a rival cartel, Dante! It was your own father!"
Dante stopped breathing. The air on the polished driveway instantly dropped ten degrees.
"Your father found out we were engaged," Clara choked out, her voice trembling with the memory of absolute trauma. "He told me that a civilian wife would make you weak. He said you needed to marry a mafia heiress to secure the syndicate. He sent his own enforcers to burn me alive, Dante. I barely escaped through the fire escape."
The cinematic realism of the absolute, crushing betrayal completely paralyzed the terrifying mafia boss.
He hadn't lost the love of his life to a random act of gang violence. He had lost her because his own father, the former boss of the syndicate, had actively ordered the brutal assassination of a pregnant woman just to protect their criminal profits.
"I found out I was pregnant the week after the fire," Clara wept, holding Sophie tighter. "I knew if I ever came back to you, your father would kill my baby to protect his legacy. So I changed my name. I hid in plain sight. I ran to protect her."
Dante stood perfectly still. The absolute, crushing magnitude of his father's betrayal hit him with the force of a freight train. He had spent six years mourning, while the man who ordered the hit sat at the head of his dining table.
His father was still alive. His father was sitting inside the mansion right now, waiting to have lunch with him.
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A dark, terrifying, and entirely demonic fury awakened inside Dante's chest.
👉 Dante turned his back on his family, completely ready to execute the monster sitting in his own house.
