Chapter 8 The Shadow of a Ghost
The air in the Moretti estate had turned from warm silk to jagged ice. Since the night Silvio found the sonogram, he hadn't spoken a word to Lisa. He didn’t have to. His presence felt like a storm cloud hanging over the hallways, suffocating everyone who breathed the same air.
Lisa spent most of her days confined to her room, the door guarded by two men who looked at her with pity rather than respect. She was no longer the guest or the fiancée; she was a golden bird back in a lead cage. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Silvio’s face not the man who had shielded her from bullets, but the monster who looked like he wanted to burn the world down to find a shadow.
On the third night, the door to her bedroom swung open without a knock.
Silvio walked in. He looked haggard. His arm was in a black sling, and his jaw was covered in a rough stubble that made him look older, more dangerous. He didn’t look at her at first. He walked to the window and stared out at the dark Italian hills.
"I’ve spent forty-eight hours running names," he said, his voice a low, raspy growl. "I’ve checked every man you ever spoke to in your father’s house. Every waiter at the clubs you visited. Every guard who worked the perimeter."
Lisa sat up in bed, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Silvio, please. Just let it go. It doesn’t matter."
He turned then, and the look in his eyes made her breath hitch. It was a mixture of agony and pure, unadulterated possessiveness. "It doesn't matter? You are under my protection. You carry my name in public. And you have another man’s mark inside you."
He crossed the room in three long strides, looming over her. Even injured, his shadow was enough to make the room feel small. He reached out with his good hand, his fingers tangling in her hair, forcing her to look up at him.
"Tell me his name, Lisa. Give me a name, and I’ll make this quick for him."
"I told you! I don't know!" she cried, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth. "It was one night. I was lonely, I was scared of my father, and I, I just wanted to feel something."
Silvio’s grip tightened slightly. His thumb brushed against her ear, a gesture that should have been romantic but felt like a threat. "You wanted to feel something? Am I not enough to make you feel? Do I not make your blood run hot? Do I not keep the nightmares away?"
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. The scent of bourbon and expensive tobacco wrapped around her. Despite her fear, her body betrayed her. Her pulse spiked, and her skin flushed where he touched her. The tension between them was a physical weight, a pull toward the very man who was hunting the father of her child.
"You make me feel terrified," she whispered.
"Good," he hissed. "Fear is honest. Love is a lie told by people who want something from you."
He let go of her hair and sat on the edge of the bed. For a moment, the mask slipped. He looked at her stomach, his hand hovering over the duvet as if he wanted to touch the life beneath it and crush it at the same time.
"I look at you," he began, his voice dropping to a vulnerable whisper she hadn't heard before, "and I see the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself. Not for the family. Not for the throne. Just for me. And then I remember that someone else got there first."
Lisa felt a pang of genuine sorrow. She reached out, her fingers tentatively touching his uninjured arm. "Silvio, I didn't choose to be here. I didn't choose any of this."
He looked at her hand, then suddenly grabbed it, pulling her toward him. He didn't kiss her; he buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in like a man drowning. It was a desperate, dark kind of intimacy. He was a king mourning a betrayal he didn't fully understand.
"I’m going to find him," Silvio promised against her skin, his breath hot and ragged. "And when I do, I’m going to kill him in front of you. Not because of the insult to my honor. But because he had the one thing I can never have the beginning of your story."
Lisa shuddered, her eyes filling with tears. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to scream that the man he was looking for was the brother he had already lost. But she knew Silvio’s code. If he knew it was Dante, he wouldn't just kill him he would kill her for the ultimate betrayal of sleeping with the enemy.
He pulled back, his eyes cold again. "The doctor said you need more iron. I’ve ordered the kitchen to change your diet. You will stay healthy, Lisa. For me."
He stood up and walked toward the door, stopping only when he reached the threshold.
"I leave for the city tonight. I have a lead on a man who was seen near your villa the night you disappeared. A man with a silver ring and a scar on his wrist."
Lisa’s heart stopped. Dante had that ring. Dante had that scar.
"Silvio, wait!"
But he was already gone. The door clicked shut, and the lock turned.
Lisa collapsed back onto the pillows, her mind spinning. Silvio was closing in. He was hunting a ghost, but that ghost was real, and he was closer than Silvio realized. She had to do something. She had to warn Dante, or she had to find a way to stop Silvio before the brothers tore each other apart.
As she lay there, she felt a small, fluttering movement in her womb. Her breath hitched. It was the first time she had felt the baby move.
"I’ll protect you," she whispered, her hand trembling as she pressed it to her stomach. "I promise."
But as the moon rose over the fortress, a small slip of paper was slid under her door. It wasn't from Silvio.
The garden. Midnight. Or the Don gets the truth.
The handwriting was familiar. It was the elegant, arrogant script of a man she had once loved and now feared more than the devil himself. Dante was here. And the trap was finally set.