Chapter 6 - The Footage on the Card
The silence in the nursery deepened, stretching between us like a taut wire.
I didn't blink. I didn't pull away. I knew that lying to a man like Alessandro Romano—a man who built empires on secrets and tracked lies like bloodhounds—was a fatal error.
Slowly, I reached into the pocket of my apron, pulled out the tiny black micro-SD card, and placed it flat in the center of his palm.
Alessandro looked down at the tiny chip resting against his skin. His dark eyes flickered with sudden realization.
"Local backup," he stated quietly.
"Dominic wiped the main servers before he made his move," I said, keeping my voice steady. "He thought he erased every digital footprint of who entered this room between midnight and two in the morning. But high-end pediatric cams maintain an independent flash memory loop in case of network severance."
Alessio closed his hand over the card, his grip tightening until his knuckles whitened.
"Let's see it," he said, turning toward the private study nook attached to the nursery.
We walked into the small alcove. Alessio sat down at the mahogany desk, pulling a secure laptop from his leather briefcase and inserting the micro-SD card via a portable multi-reader.
A string of encrypted code flashed across the screen before a high-definition video file appeared, timestamped precisely at 1:58 AM.
Play.
The screen flickered to life, casting a cold blue light across Alessandro’s sharp features.
The nursery appeared in crisp, wide-angle detail. The mahogany crib, the changing table, the soft glow of the nightlight. For the first two minutes, the room was entirely empty, save for the quiet, rhythmic rise and fall of Leo sleeping in his bassinet.
Then, at precisely 2:01 AM, the side door clicked open.
A figure stepped into the frame.
I held my breath.
It wasn't Dominic.
The person wore a dark, tailored silk robe, their face partially obscured by the hood, but the distinctive diamond tennis bracelet glinting around the left wrist caught the harsh infrared light of the camera lens.
Alessio’s body went completely rigid beside me.
The figure walked silently to the changing table, picked up the blue enamel bead that had been sitting loose in a porcelain dish, and leaned over the crib. We watched on screen as the gloved hand gently pried open the sleeping infant's mouth, dropped the bead inside, and then stepped back into the shadows just as the monitor began to squeak at 2:02 AM.
The video ended.
The screen went black, reflecting our frozen expressions in the glass.
"Elena," Alessandro whispered.
The name left his lips like a curse.
Elena Romano. His cousin. A woman who had sat at the dining table with the twelve families just forty-eight hours ago, smiling, drinking red wine, and pretending to adore the infant heir who stood between her own branch of the family and complete control of the Moretti-Romano syndicate.
"She used Dominic as a scapegoat," I said quietly, the pieces locking into place. "She knew Dominic was skimming from the shipping logs. She blackmailed him into helping her disable the servers, thinking that if the baby died, the blame would fall entirely on security negligence or a tragic accident."
Alessandro did not speak.
He sat completely motionless in the chair, his face cast in total shadow. The ambient light from the monitor illuminated the rigid line of his jaw and the dangerous, volatile darkness in his eyes.
When he finally moved, the motion was slow, deliberate, and terrifying.
He stood up, closed the laptop lid with a soft click, and slipped the micro-SD card into his pocket.
"Where are you going?" I asked, stepping in front of him.
"To finish this," Alessandro said, his voice flat, devoid of all human emotion. "Tonight."
"If you kill her in cold blood, her faction on the Commission will declare open war," I warned, grabbing his forearm. "You need proof that the other families can't dismiss as a vendetta. You need to dismantle her legally, financially, and systematically before you strike."
Alessandro looked down at my hand resting on his arm. Slowly, his massive hand covered mine, his grip firm, grounding, and unnervingly warm.
"You think like a strategist, Clara," he said softly, a dark smile touching his lips. "Most people would be packing their bags by now."
"I have nowhere to go at three in the morning," I replied dryly. "And my shift doesn't end until dawn."
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Alessandro let out a low, dark chuckle—the first real laugh I had heard from him since I met him.
"Then let's finish the shift," he murmured.
