Chapter 56 The Last Supper
Alessia didn’t sleep the night before the gala.
She lay on the narrow bed in the safe house, staring at the ceiling until her eyes burned. She kept replaying the plan in her head until the details blurred together.
Nine p.m. Library. First drink. Alone.
Nine fifteen. Guard shift change. A small window. Barely enough time.
Reach. Draw. Aim. Fire.
Her hand moved on its own, fingers curling as if a gun were already there. Her body remembered even when her mind didn’t.
She’d killed before, Cormac but it was fast and necessary, a do or die situation.
But this wasn’t like that.
This was her father.
The man who’d taught her how to ride a bike. Who corrected her Italian when she got the words wrong. Who sat beside her hospital bed when she was seven and couldn’t breathe.
The same man who’d ordered her mother’s death.
Who made a ten-year-old girl lie to police.
Who taught her that love was something you used, not something you gave.
You can do this, she told herself. You have to.
Her hands still shook.
A soft knock broke the silence.
“Alessia?” Liam’s voice. Careful. “You awake?”
“Yes.”
He came in, closing the door quietly. He looked as tired as she felt. His hair was messing. The heavy cast on his hand was gone, replaced with a lighter brace—just enough to keep it working.
“Couldn’t sleep either,” he said.
“Yeah.”
They stood there, not touching, both knowing tomorrow would change everything.
“I made food,” Liam said after a moment. “Nothing special. Just thought… we should eat. Before tomorrow.”
Neither of them said it, but they both knew what it was.
The last supper.
The kitchen was small, barely room for two people. Liam had managed to make pasta carbonara with whatever he could find. The smell maked the space
warm, familiar.
Like a life neither of them had ever really lived.
They sat across from each other. Steam rose from their plates.
Alessia picked up her fork. Put it down and up again.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
Liam looked up. “Okay.”
“I want to tell the truth, everything without omitting anything.” Her voice stayed calm, but her hands shook. “You deserve to know who I am. What I’ve done, before tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do.” She looked at him. “If I die tomorrow, you need to know. And if I live… you need to decide if you can still stay.”
Liam set his fork down. “Tell me.”
So she did.
She told him about the FBI. About being twenty-two, desperate to get away from her father. About Agent Thorne meeting her in a coffee shop and showing her pictures of her mother’s so-called accident.
Don’t you want the truth?
She told him about the training. How they taught her to lie, to read people, to turn loyalty into a weapon.
About the mission. Infiltrate the Scarpetti family. Gather proof. Build a case big enough to take down everyone.
Six years of pretending. FBI by day, perfect daughter by night. Losing pieces of herself until she didn’t know which version was real.
“The marriage,” she said quietly, “was supposed to help get close to your family. Record everything. Prove the alliance. The FBI wanted it. They called it the final step.”
“But you didn’t,” Liam said softly.
“No.” She twisted her fingers together. “Because when I met you… you didn’t treat me like a pawn, you treated me like a person.”
She told him about the bugs. The recordings. The reports she sent in.
“I was meant to betray you,” she whispered. “That was the job.”
Liam didn’t interrupt. He just listened.
“My mother didn’t fall,” Alessia said, her voice breaking. “She was trying to leave to take me with her. My father found out. He had her killed. And made me lie about it.”
Tears slipped down her face, but she kept going.
“I wanted justice and revenge. The FBI gave me a way to do that, a legal way not illegal or so I thought.”
“But then you happened.” She looked at him fully now. “You were kind, honest. You loved your sister more than power. You wanted out just like I did.”
Her voice dropped.
“And I fell in love with you. Which was the worst possible thing I could have done.”
The room went quiet.
Liam stood for a second, she thought he was leaving.
Instead, he came around the table and knelt in front of her.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
His eyes were wet. Not angry, just sad and clam.
“Do you love me?” he asked. “Right now, not the mission or the plan, just me.”
“Yes,” she said, breaking. “More than anything. And it scares me. Because loving you means I can lose you.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her while she cried.
“Then tomorrow,” he said, steady, “we breathe together.”
“I’m still FBI,” she said quietly.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is you chose to stay. You chose us.”
“That doesn’t make me good—"
“It makes you human,” he said. “And I love you. All of it.”
“Even the lies?”
“Even that.”
“I’m choosing you,” he said firmly. “Whatever happens tomorrow.”
He kissed her—slow, deep, full of everything they couldn’t say.
When they pulled apart, they were both crying.
“If we die,” she whispered, “at least we were honest.”
“We won’t die,” he said. “We’ll survive and we’ll run.”
They finished eating in silence. Comfortable. Present.
Later, Liam took her hand. “Stay with me tonight.”
“I don’t want to be alone either.”
They didn’t make love. They just held each other.
“Tell me about after,” Alessia said.
“A small house,” Liam said. "With a quiet garden”
“I want to teach,” she said. “Help kids who’ve been through things.”
“You’d be good at that.”
They slept like that before morning barely came.
“It’s time,” Liam said gently.
The dress and gun already set.
Everything she needed to kill her father.
She changed and watched herself become someone else entirely.
“Ready?” Liam asked.
“No,” she said. “But I’m going.”
“I’ll be watching,” he said.
One last kiss.
Then they left for her father's mansion.
The lights and music have already started with laughter of people that have arrived could be heard.
Her father smiled at her immediately she entered.
She smiled back.
And then she saw Maria.
The woman who raised her.
Maria shook her head.
No.
Fear flooded Alessia’s chest.
Something was wrong.
And then she saw Valeria at the end of the mansion, smiling.
Alessia’s hand moved to her thigh.
This is a trap.