Page 118 of The Mafia King's Lost Son
She’s guarded by soldiers. At least thirty of them, all armed to the teeth with armored gears and automatic weapons.
But she’s not dressed like them. She’s wearing an expensive suit, dark and perfectly tailored, her hair pulled back severely from a face that’s beautiful, cold and without mercy.
My eyes widen as I stare at her, an alarm instantly going off in my head.I know her.
At that moment, everything pieces together and I almost stop breathing.
The voice!
She’s the owner of the voice from my memory that I’ve been trying to recall.
I remember her walking through that mansion six years ago. Her designer heels clicking on the concrete floor. Her expensive perfume mixing with the smell of fear, sweat and desperation of the girls. She inspected us like we were livestock, pointing at girls, deciding their fates with a flick of her manicured finger. She never touched anyone herself, never had to get her hands dirty. She just pointed, and other people did the dirty work for her.
She moves toward the altar, stepping over bodies like they’re nothing more than dirt. She stops at the center of the cathedral, her eyes scanning the shadows and the hiding spots with a predatory manner.
“Scarlett.” Her voice rings out across the cathedral, cutting through the gunfire. “I know you’re here somewhere. I can smell your fear from here, hun.”
Oh god, she knows my name.
I press myself harder against the pillar, pulling Luca tighter against my chest, clamping my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. My heart is pounding so loud I fear she can hear it.
“You can keep hiding if you want,” she continues, her heels clicking on the floor as she paces slowly. “My men will find you eventually. They always do. But if you come out now, voluntarily, I’ll make it quick. Painless and easy. A single bullet to the head.You won’t feel a thing.” She pauses, letting that sink in. “But if you keep hiding, I promise you, it will be slow. Very, very slow.”
I don’t move, because my entire body has been paralyzed by fear.
“You know, I’ve been looking for you for six years,” she says, like she’s having a casual conversation. “Six years of hunting down every single girl who was in that mansion the night my Antonio died.”
The other girls.She killed them. I was right after all. Their deaths were too precise to be coincidental.
“I watched the CCTV footage of Antonio’s death hundreds of times, can you believe that?” She laughs, a cold chilling sound. “He looked right at the camera with his last breath. Even in death, he still trusted me to fix things. He tried to tell me something—where he hid the ledger, I assume. But the audio was damaged. I could see his lips moving but I couldn’t hear a single word.”
She stops pacing and turns slowly, scanning the cathedral again.
“But you were there, weren’t you, my darling? Standing right in front of him when he died. Close enough to hear everything he whispered.” Her voice hardens. “And you went running to Dante. So I decided to be patient instead. Let Dante Moretti do the hard work. Let him chase the clues and follow the trail and find the ledger for me.” She smiles. “And he did. He found it. Which means I don’t need any of you anymore.”
Luca whimpers against my hand and I hold him tighter, my whole body shaking.
“So here’s how this ends. My men will kill everyone in this building. I take the ledger. No loose ends this time.”
Sweat breaks out as my grip on Luca tightens. I have to look for a way to get him out of here. I don’t mind dying, but nothing must happen to my son.
A hand suddenly clamps over my mouth from behind. Panic grips me, and I almost fight, but I hear Marco’s voice in my ear, low and urgent.
“Shhhh… Don’t make a sound. Follow me. Now.”
He pulls me backward, away from the pillar, guiding me and Luca through the shadows toward a different position. I stumble but he keeps me upright as we keep moving, until we’re behind a thick stone column far from Isabella’s line of sight.
“Who is she?” I gasp, even though I already have a clue.
“Isabella Marchetti. Antonio’s widow,” Marco reveals. “She was his wife and partner in crime. The real power behind his empire and the shadow queen who pulled all the strings. She was the one who ran the trafficking operation, selected the girls, organized the shipments and handled the money while her husband played the charming businessman at fancy parties.” His fists clench. “Antonio was the face everyone saw, but Isabella was the real mastermind. They call her the cold, calculating machine.”
Everything dawns on me now. We all thought Antonio was deadly, how wrong we were. His wife is clearly deadlier.
But before I could ask more questions, Isabella’s forces open fire again and the cathedral becomes an apocalyptic warzone.
Her soldiers are fresh and well-armed, pushing forward and fighting with relentless vigor. Dante’s team has alreadydwindled from fighting Viktor’s men, exhausted and running low on ammunition. They really timed their attack well.
I watch one of Dante’s soldiers go down with three bullets in his chest. He was young, maybe mid-twenties, probably had someone waiting for him at home. Another takes a shot to the head and drops without a sound. A third tries to retreat and gets cut down from behind, his body jerking as the gun tear through him.
