Chapter Ten: The Woman In His Shirt
Greco wanted Alara angry.
He got Alara precise.
She spent the night building a map.
Photos.
Angles.
Medical bracelet.
Penthouse elevator logs leaked through a nurse who owed her a favor.
The woman’s name was Lucia Sorrento.
Not mistress.
Prisoner.
Sister to the man who ordered Seraphina Duca’s murder.
And recently treated for a gunshot wound at a private clinic under a false name.
Matteo had hidden her.
Why?
Alara already knew.
Because Lucia had information.
Because Greco wanted her dead.
Because Matteo thought telling Alara would put her in danger.
Again.
At dawn, Alara entered the mansion through the kitchen.
Bruno was waiting.
He did not look surprised.
“Don said you wouldn’t come.”
“He says many wrong things.”
Bruno opened the side door wider.
“Nico is in the library.”
“I know.”
“Don is in the cellar.”
Alara stopped.
“Why?”
Bruno’s face hardened.
“Lucia Sorrento is dying.”
Alara moved.
The cellar beneath the mansion was not a dungeon.
That almost made it worse.
It was clean.
White walls.
Medical lights.
A bed.
Lucia lay strapped to monitors, skin waxy, hair damp.
Matteo stood beside her.
When he saw Alara, the blood left his face.
“No.”
She walked past him.
“Move.”
“You should not be here.”
“Move, or I will move you.”
Lucia’s pulse was weak.
Sepsis.
Bad wound care.
Fever.
Alara examined the dressing.
Amateur stitching.
Dirty thread.
She looked at Matteo.
“You kidnapped a dying witness and did not call me?”
“I called another doctor.”
“You called an idiot.”
Lucia laughed weakly.
“I like her.”
Matteo looked torn between murder and collapse.
Alara snapped gloves on.
“Bruno, fluids. Broad-spectrum antibiotics. Tomaso, call the clinic. Quietly.”
Everyone moved.
Matteo did not.
Alara faced him.
“You stand there when you are useful. You leave when you are not.”
His eyes burned.
“I did this to keep you out.”
“Yes.”
She cut the old stitches.
“You failed.”
Lucia hissed.
Alara leaned over her.
“Greco staged the photos?”
Lucia nodded.
“He wanted her gone.”
Matteo’s jaw clenched.
Lucia’s eyes shifted to him.
“He knew you’d let her hate you.”
Alara did not look up.
The blade in her hand stayed steady.
“He was right.”
Matteo made a sound.
Not quite breath.
Not quite pain.
Lucia grabbed Alara’s wrist with surprising strength.
“Greco has the boy’s school route.”
The room froze.
Alara’s blood turned cold.
“What?”
Lucia coughed.
“Tonight. He takes Nico. Trades him for Matteo’s seat.”
Matteo was already moving.
Alara caught his arm.
“No.”
His face was lethal.
“Let go.”
“No. Think.”
“My nephew—”
“Will die if you run blind.”
He stared at her hand on his sleeve.
At the place she stopped him.
At the cage he always tried to build.
This time, she held the door.
“Tell me the route,” Alara said to Lucia.
Lucia whispered.
Alara listened.
Then looked at Matteo.
“We use me.”
“No.”
“Listen fully before refusing.”
“No.”
She stepped into him.
Close.
Furious.
Unshaken.
“You trusted my hands with your life twice. Trust my mind once.”
His eyes searched hers.
For fear.
For hesitation.
For permission to protect her badly.
He found none.
Only choice.
His voice dropped.
“If this goes wrong—”
“It will not.”
“If it does?”
Alara looked toward the ceiling.
Toward the library.
Toward the child who had asked no one to survive this much.
“Then we bleed in the right direction.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was not surrendering.
He was choosing beside her.
Finally.
