"Bruno." My voice cuts through the basement. Calm. Controlled. "Sit down."
Bruno doesn't sit. His hands curl into fists at his sides. "Dante. What is he talking about?"
I push off the wall. Walk slowly toward the center of the room, toward Alejandro. My footsteps echo in the silence.
I stop in front of Alejandro. Look down at him. He's still grinning, still confident, still believing he holds cards worth playing.
"Tell them," I say. "If you want. Tell them everything."
Alejandro's grin falters.
"Go ahead." I crouch down, bringing myself to his eye level.
The room is silent. Waiting.
Alejandro's tongue darts out to wet his lips. The confidence is cracking now. He's smart enough to read the room. Smart enough to understand what I'm offering him.
A chance to speak.
A chance to turn this family against me.
A chance to watch them tear each other apart with the truth.
But also a chance to piss off any one of the people in this room. And if he does that—if he says the wrong thing to the wrong person—he'll face their rage. Not mine. Theirs.
Bruno takes a step forward. "Someone better start talking. Now."
Alejandro looks at Bruno. At the barely contained violence in every line of his body. At the way his hands keep flexing, reaching for weapons that aren't there.
Then he looks at Lorenzo. At the cold fury in his eyes. The man he thought was dead. The man whose death was supposed to be the first domino in a chain that would bring this entire family down.
Then at Dmitri. At the Bratva heir who has no loyalty to Alejandro, no reason to show mercy, no hesitation about violence.
Alejandro's mouth opens.
Then closes.
He's smart. I'll give him that. Smart enough to recognize a trap when he's sitting in the middle of one.
"Nothing to say?" I straighten up. "That's what I thought."
"Dante." Bruno's voice is a growl. "Explain. Now."
I turn to face the family. My family. The people I've protected for twenty years. The people I almost destroyed to save.
"Sit down, Bruno. This is going to take a while."
I take a breath. The room is silent, waiting. Every eye fixed on me.
"Giuseppe Sartori," I begin, "was not the man you thought he was."
Aria is on her feet before I finish the sentence. Her rosary beads clatter against the concrete floor.
"Lies." Her voice shakes with fury. "Whatever this man has told you, whatever poison he has poured into your ears—they are lies. My husband was a good man. A faithful man. He built this family from nothing. He?—"
"Mamma."
Vittoria's voice cuts through her mother's tirade. Quiet. Steady. Final.
