"MAID'S 6-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER WHISPERED ""CHECK BEHIND THE PAINTING, SIR""—MAFIA BOSS FROZE, THEN HIS FIANCÉE'S SECRET UNRAVELED

The rain had stopped by midday, leaving the streets of Manhattan slick and gleaming under a pale, wintry sun.

Aleandro’s black Escalade pulled up outside the federal penitentiary in upstate New York—a bleak, gray monolith of concrete and razor wire sitting beneath a canopy of dead pine trees. He didn't go through the front entrance with warrants or paperwork. Men like Aleandro Moretti didn't need warrants when they had wardens on retainer and debts stretching back decades.

Ten minutes later, sitting across a scratched stainless-steel table in a private holding room meant for attorneys, was David Vance.

David looked nothing like his sister. Where Isabella was refined, dark-haired, and possessed an innate elegance, David was twenty-four, hollow-eyed, trembling in an orange jumpsuit that was two sizes too big, with ink-stained fingers and the frantic, twitchy energy of a gambler who had bet his life on a hand of poker and lost everything.

"I... I don't know who you are," David stammered, pulling his hands back into his lap as Aleandro sat down opposite him without speaking. "My lawyer isn't due until—"

"Your lawyer isn't coming," Aleandro said calmly. He reached inside his coat, pulled out a manila folder, and dropped it onto the metal table.

David stared at the folder, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow gasps. "What is this?"

"This is the complete financial audit of every embezzlement transaction you executed over the last two years," Aleandro said smoothly. "The pension funds, the shell companies in the Cayman Islands, the forged signatures on the municipal bonds. It's all here. Enough to guarantee you spend the next thirty years of your life making license plates in a federal cage where the guards don't speak English."

David turned completely white. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

"Please," David whispered, his voice cracking into a pathetic whine. "I didn't mean to... I got mixed up with the wrong people. Gambling debts. They said if I didn't sign the transfer papers, they’d break my legs. I was just trying to pay them off!"

"And when you got caught," Aleandro continued, his voice cutting through the panic like a scalpel, "your sister walked into an FBI field office and traded my life to keep you out of this hole."

David stopped breathing. He looked up, his eyes locking onto Aleandro’s cold, unblinking stare. The realization of who was sitting across from him hit him like a physical blow.

“You’re... you’re Aleandro Moretti,” David breathed, the name sticking in his throat like broken glass.

"I am," Aleandro said softly. "She did all of this for you, David. She lied to me, betrayed me, risked her life every single day, and sold out everything I've built—all because her little brother was too weak and stupid to face the consequences of his own actions."

"She didn't want to!" David cried, tears spilling over his lower lashes, his hands gripping the edge of the table. "I begged her not to go to the feds! I told her to let me take the fall! But she said she couldn't lose the only family she had left! She loves you, man—she cries herself to sleep every night because of what she has to do! She hates herself more than you could ever hate her!"

Aleandro sat in silence, watching the boy unravel. The anger in his chest didn't flare up; instead, it settled into a heavy, crushing weight.

He had spent his whole life believing that love was a weakness—a liability that enemies used to put a bullet in your back. He had chosen Isabella precisely because she seemed clean of that world, a sanctuary from the violence.

Instead, she had proved him right in the worst possible way: love had made her a traitor.

"Here is what is going to happen, David," Aleandro said, standing up slowly and buttoning his suit jacket. "The federal prosecutor handling your case is going to receive an anonymous packet containing proof that your embezzlement was coerced under physical duress by federal agents looking for a fabricated case against the Moretti family."

David blinked, confusion breaking through his terror. "What? You're... you're getting me out?"

"You're going to be released on a technicality within forty-eight hours," Aleandro said, his eyes hard as flint. "You and your sister are going to pack a single bag. You are going to get on a private plane to a city where nobody speaks English, where my name is never spoken, and where you will never, ever touch a computer keyboard again."

"And... and Isabella?" David asked, his voice trembling. "What happens to her?"