Chapter Forty-Four
Sabrina
By the following afternoon, the house had settled into an uneasy calm.
The tears had dried and the conversations had quietened, but the weight of everything I'd told my family the night before still lingered in every corridor of the Moretti estate.
Life, however, didn't stop.
An emergency meeting had been called before breakfast, summoning the heads of every mafia family on the island. Sergei had made his intentions clear, and after what had almost happened to Dario, no one was willing to wait for him to make the next move.
Walking into the conference room without my mask felt strangely unfamiliar.
I'd sat at that table countless times before, listening to alliances being forged, wars being planned and impossible decisions being made. Every one of those meetings had been attended as Morana.
This was the first time I walked through those doors as Sabrina.
No one paid me any particular attention. To them, I was simply Rafael and Bianca Moretti's daughter, invited to sit in on the meeting after everything my family had been through. They greeted me politely before turning their attention back to the discussion unfolding around the table.
Dad called the meeting to order, and before long, the conversation centred on Sergei.
Ideas were exchanged, arguments were made, and every family had their own opinion on how Sergei should be handled.
Every so often, Sean's phone vibrated. He'd glance down at the screen before calmly relaying Morana's thoughts to the room, and the discussion would continue as though she were sitting among us.
I kept my attention on the meeting, careful not to linger on Sean for too long.
Every message and response had already been planned, and by the time the discussion came to an end, every family around the table believed they had agreed on the best course of action.
They had.
They just didn't realise Sean and I had reached the same conclusion long before any of them had walked through those doors.
As the meeting broke apart and chairs scraped softly against the wooden floor, Sean slipped his phone into his pocket and looked across the table at me.
He didn't say a word.
He didn't have to.
Everything was ready.
Now all we needed to do...
...was play our part.