The Socialite Drenched The Maid In Champagne — Until The Mafia Boss Saw Who She Was Shielding

Lorenzo’s reaction was instant. He shoved Sophie behind him, drawing his weapon as the mansion’s internal alarm system began to wail with deafening urgency. The red emergency lights bathed the grand library in blood-red hues.

"Marco!" Lorenzo roared into his lapel communicator. "Full facility lockdown! Code Black! Someone is inside the perimeter!"

Static hissed through the earpiece. There was no answer from Marco.

Sophie’s blood turned to ice. Marco had been Lorenzo’s most loyal lieutenant for eight years. He had taken a bullet for Isabella during the dock ambush. If Marco was silent, it meant the unthinkable had occurred.

"Stay behind me, Sophie," Lorenzo whispered, his voice deadly quiet. "Do not leave this room."

"I am not letting you face an assassin alone," Sophie replied, pulling a heavy brass letter opener from the desk, her knuckles white.

The heavy double doors of the library slowly creaked open.

A figure stepped into the dim, red-lit corridor outside the room. The footsteps were slow, deliberate, and completely unhurried.

Sophie gasped.

Walking through the doorway was not a masked mercenary or a hitman in tactical gear. It was someone wearing an immaculate, tailored white physician’s coat.

The man stepped into the light of the chandelier. He was in his late fifties, with silver hair combed back neatly, carrying a leather medical satchel that Sophie would recognize anywhere in the world. On his left lapel was a silver crest—the same crest of the Vance Consortium.

Sophie’s entire body paralyzed. The brass letter opener slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the parquet floor.

"Hello, Sophie," the man said softly, his voice carrying the exact warm, gentle timbre that had sung her to sleep when she was a little girl.

"Father...?" Sophie whispered, her voice barely a breath. "You... you were buried three years ago..."

Lorenzo stepped forward, his gun trained dead center on the man’s forehead, his finger tightening against the trigger. "Jonathan Clark. You faked your own death."

Dr. Jonathan Clark smiled a cold, sorrowful smile, raising his hands slightly. But in his right hand, he was not holding a weapon. He was holding a small glass detonator wired to a digital readout blinking down from sixty seconds.

"I had to die, Lorenzo," Jonathan Clark said calmly, looking at the mafia don with piercing eyes. "Because as long as Jonathan Clark was alive, the Vance family would never let Sophie live in peace. But you see, my dear boy... I didn't come back to kill you."

Jonathan turned his gaze to his daughter, his eyes filling with a terrifying, fanatical darkness.

"I came back to take Sophie home. Because she is the only one who carries the finalized genetic sequence in her blood. And the true war for this city... has only just begun."