Chapter 8 - THE DAUGHTER OF THE ENEMY
Nico ordered the mansion sealed.
No one left.
No phone calls.
No vehicles.
Rafael was moved to a locked room under armed guard.
Serafina remained in the dining room.
She no longer looked like a fiancée.
She looked like what she had always been.
A soldier.
Nico sat across from her.
“Tell me everything.”
She laughed quietly.
“Why?”
“Because your father is losing control of his own operation.”
Her eyes shifted.
“Rafael just tried to kill a child you protected.”
Nothing.
“He also said your father is dying.”
Still nothing.
Nico leaned forward.
“And because if Rafael was willing to shoot you once the necklace and watch were recovered, then you were never going home.”
That landed.
Serafina looked away.
Nico waited.
Eventually, she spoke.
“My father sent me into your life four years ago.”
Not three.
Four.
Before Nico even knew her.
A charity board.
A foundation fundraiser.
A carefully arranged introduction.
Every coincidence had been built.
Her education history.
Her apartment.
Her friends.
Her job at an art foundation.
Even the woman who introduced them had been paid.
“My father believed your family could only be destroyed from inside,” she said.
“So you volunteered.”
“Yes.”
Nico’s eyes hardened.
Serafina did not look away.
“At first.”
“What changed?”
She smiled bitterly.
“You’re asking whether I fell in love with you.”
Nico said nothing.
“I don’t know.”
That answer was more believable than yes.
She continued.
“My assignment had stages.”
Nico’s face became still.
“Say them.”
“Your father controlled the old alliances.”
Her voice went flat.
“He had to die first.”
Teresa looked away.
“Lucia handled family records. She discovered inconsistencies in my identity.”
Serafina swallowed.
“She became second.”
Nico’s hands tightened.
“Tomas?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be in the car.”
“But after he survived?”
Serafina closed her eyes.
“My father said a living Bellandi heir was a future problem.”
Nico stood.
Serafina looked up.
“I delayed it.”
“You want credit?”
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“I want you to understand why Rafael stopped trusting me.”
Nico stared at her.
“And me?”
“You were last.”
“After the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
She looked at the table.
“The necklace would give us the vault. Marriage would give me legal access to your companies. Once the accounts were stripped and your allies exposed…”
She looked at him.
“You were supposed to die in your sleep.”
Nobody spoke.
“Poison?”
I asked.
Serafina looked toward me.
“Medication.”
Exactly like Nico’s father.
Nico laughed once.
There was nothing amused in it.
“So you were going to make me die like him.”
“Yes.”
“And inherit what remained.”
“Yes.”
The honesty now was brutal.
Perhaps because there was nothing left to save.
Nico looked at the fake necklace.
“Where is the real one?”
Serafina hesitated.
“Rafael had it.”
Nico’s eyes went toward the locked room.
“Had?”
“I gave it to him Tuesday. He was supposed to move it to a Rinaldi courier Wednesday morning.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
My mother interrupted.
“He didn’t.”
Everyone looked at her.
“How do you know?”
She pointed toward Rafael’s discarded black glove on the table.
“There’s green polishing compound on the cuff.”
I looked closer.
A faint dark-green smear marked the leather.
My mother had taught me that compound.
Jeweler’s rouge mixed for emerald settings.
“He opened the necklace,” I said.
She nodded.
“Recently.”
Nico turned.
Rafael had never sent the necklace away.
He had opened it himself.
He had wanted the vault without the Rinaldis.
May you like
The infiltrator had betrayed the family that planted him.
And suddenly the entire conspiracy shifted again.
