Chapter 5 - The Mask Comes Off
The silence that followed inside the small staff room was suffocating.
Alessandro did not turn around. He remained facing the empty closet, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.
“You terminated her,” Alessandro repeated. It was not a question.
“Yes,” Isabella said smoothly, stepping into the room. Her heels clicked against the wood. “She was incompetent, Alessandro. I caught her going through the financial files in your private study yesterday. When I confronted her, she was rude and dismissive. I couldn't tolerate a thief and a spy working under our roof, especially with our wedding coming up next month.”
“A thief,” Alessandro murmured.
“Precisely,” Isabella continued, her tone dripping with fake sympathy. “I had security clear her room immediately. I paid her out in cash and had her escorted off the property. Honestly, darling, you’re too trusting with the staff. Just because you couldn't see what she was doing doesn't mean—”
“Which car did they take?” Alessandro interrupted sharply.
Isabella paused, her wine glass stopping halfway to her lips. She frowned slightly, looking at his broad back. “What?”
“Which car,” Alessandro repeated, his voice dropping an octave, heavy and vibrating with lethal authority. “Did they take?”
Isabella scoffed softly. “I don't know, Alessandro. A company car. One of the security sedans from the lower garage. Why does it matter? She’s gone. You don't need to stress yourself over a peasant maid and her brat—”
Alessandro slowly raised his right hand to his face.
With a single, deliberate movement, he unhooked the dark sunglasses from behind his ears and pulled them away from his face.
He turned around.
Isabella opened her mouth to speak, but the words froze in her throat.
Alessandro’s eyes were locked directly onto hers.
His left eye—a deep, piercing steel-blue—was wide open, clear, and burning with an absolute, predatory intensity. The pupils contracted in the room’s light, tracking her every movement with terrifying precision.
Isabella’s wine glass slipped from her hand.
It crashed onto the hardwood floor, shattering into dozens of sharp fragments, splashing white wine across her gray wool dress and his dark leather shoes.
She took a instinctual step back, her hands shaking, her face going completely white as a sheet.
“You...” Isabella whispered, her breath hitching in her throat. “You... your eyes...”
Alessandro took one long, terrifying step toward her, stepping straight over the shattered glass without looking down.
“You’re wearing gray,” Alessandro said coldly, his voice cutting through her panic like a razor blade. “A gray dress. Silver earrings. And your left shoe is missing a heel buckle.”
Isabella’s jaw worked silently. She backed away until her shoulders struck the doorframe.
For five years, she had walked around this man assuming he was completely blind. She had forged documents in front of him. She had spoken in hushed whispers to her co-conspirators while standing two feet away from his desk. She had looked at him with absolute contempt, smiling behind his back while slipping poisoned drops into his eyes every single day.
And all this time... he had been watching.
“Alessandro...” Isabella stammered, her voice cracking with pure terror. “I... I don't—how long?”
“I asked you a question, Isabella,” Alessandro said, stopping six inches from her face. His height towered over her, his shadow swallowing her completely. “Which car did they take?”
Outside the estate, the sound of powerful V8 engines roared to life in the main driveway as Frankie "The Hammer" and twenty heavily armed Moretti enforcers mobilized under emergency orders.
May you like
Isabella looked into his clear, ice-blue eyes and realized, with a wave of sickening dread, that the blind Don was dead.
And the monster had returned.
