"Cristo." He set the phone down with deliberate care. "There it is. He's not even pretending anymore. You were supposed to be his retrieval service and executioner. Find her, kill her, or deliver her to be killed. That was always the blood debt."
"I know."
"By not returning her these past three days, you've already refused him." Domenico's dark eyes met mine. "And now he's given you an ultimatum with a 24-hour deadline. He knows you've made your choice. He'll come for both of you."
The weight of it settled over me like lead. I'd broken a blood debt. In our world, that carried consequences measured in blood and war.
"Let him come."
"Alessio—"
"What was I supposed to do?" I stood, needing movement. "Execute an innocent woman because her father wants to bury his mistakes? Deliver her to him like a lamb to slaughter?"
"No." Domenico's voice was firm. "You were supposed to do exactly what you did. But we need to understand what that means. The moment you kept her past day one, you chose her over the oath. Marco knows it. The Commission will know it. And they'll come asking questions we need answers for."
I crossed to the window. Dawn was breaking over the city, painting steel and glass in shades of blood and gold.
"Then we give them answers." I turned back. "What did your team verify?"
Domenico pulled out his tablet. "Everything she told you checks out. The weapons shipments are real—Caldwell's using his senate position to expedite customs clearances. The cartel connection is documented across seventeen email exchanges. Marco's real estate company, DeLuca Properties & Development, is laundering approximately thirty-two million through luxury hotel acquisitions over the past fourteen months."
"And the fabricated evidence against Valentina?"
His expression darkened. "Sophisticated enough to guarantee federal conviction. They created a shell account in her name, moved funds through it in a pattern consistent with embezzlement, then closed it. There's a paper trail showing her accessing Caldwell's campaign finance records. Forged signatures on withdrawal authorizations. Even fabricated security footage of her entering his office after hours."
"How long would she get?"
"Twenty years minimum. Conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, campaign finance violations—they built a case that would bury her."
The rage that swept through me was cold and focused. This wasn't just about silencing Valentina. It was about destroying her so completely that even if she survived, no one would ever believe her truth.
"They planned this from the beginning," I said. "The engagement, the wedding, all of it. They were going to use her, implicate her, then either keep her trapped or throw her away once she outlived her usefulness."
"And when she ran before they could spring the trap, she became a liability instead of an asset." Domenico set the tablet aside. "She memorized evidence they can't afford to have exposed. That photographic memory of hers—it's a death sentence in their eyes."
"Not anymore." I pulled up my contacts and started making calls. "We're going to dismantle everything Marco built. Every shipment, every account, every lie. And we're going to make sure the world knows exactly what kind of monster he is."
"That's war, Alessio."
"Then it's war."
Valentina found me in my office three hours later. I'd mobilized two dozen men, called in favors from contacts in three cities, and started building our counter-offensive. When she walked in, her hair still damp from the shower, wearing another one of my shirts over leggings, the exhaustion on her face made something in my chest tighten.
"You didn't sleep." It wasn't a question.
"Neither did you." She moved to my desk, gestured at the scattered files and maps. "What's all this?"
"Insurance." I handed her the tablet showing Marco's message. "Read it."
She scanned the words. Went pale. Read it again.
"He wants you to kill me." Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled on the tablet. "The blood debt. It was never about bringing me home safely. It was about—"
"Execution." The word tasted like poison. "He gave me twenty-four hours to comply."
"And you're not going to." Again, not a question.
"No."
