13. War for the Throne #3
"Surveillance first. Schedules, routines, security rotations — anything I could access from inside the estate.
I copied briefing boards, logged guard shift changes, and mapped the corridors.
" He can't look at me. "Then the phone. Dante gave me a cloning device.
I used it on her phone while it was charging in the guest suite.
Three minutes. After that, Dante could mirror everything — send messages that looked like they came from her device, and build whatever trail he needed. "
"The photographs."
"I took the first one. Outside the hospital. Dante told me the angle and the framing. I delivered it to your desk during a shift change." He pauses. "The second one — inside the hospital — was Dante's man. But I gave him the schedule."
"The security feed. East corridor."
Ricci's eyes drop to the table. "I had admin access to the camera system through the estate network.
Dante sent me forty seconds of footage — her walking past the study door on a different day, slowed down and timestamped to look like she'd stopped.
I inserted it into the archive and flagged it so it would surface if anyone ran a search on her movements.
" He swallows again. "It wasn't real. None of it was real. "
"And the communications. The folder."
"That was all Dante. He used the cloned phone to send messages to a burner — operational details I gave him, mixed with surveillance data.
He built the trail to look like it came from her.
The timestamps matched because the clone mirrors location data.
The content matched because I was feeding real information into the pipeline. "
He looks up. His face is gray.
"She never sent a single message. She never contacted anyone. She had no idea the phone was compromised."
The room goes silent.
Sofia didn't betray me.
She never betrayed me.
And some part of me knew it.
That is the truth I cannot escape now. Not the folder.
Not the footage. Not Dante’s perfect trail of lies.
Me. I saw the cracks. I heard them in her voice in the library, saw them in the way her hands shook around the folder, felt them every time she looked at me like she was waiting for me to choose her and not the evidence placed between us.
And instead of trusting that instinct, I turned her into a strategy.
I told myself the distance was protection.
I told myself the east wing was in control.
I told myself keeping her close, frightened, watched, and isolated would force the real traitor to move.
I made her the center of the trap and called it necessary because necessity was easier to live with than the truth.
I didn’t believe she betrayed me. Not completely.
That is what makes this worse.
I let the evidence matter more than her pain. I let the plan matter more than the woman standing in front of me, begging me to see her. I used her as bait to catch the monster behind the walls, and while I was watching the trap, the monster reached her first.
And now she's gone. Not exiled to the east wing, not locked behind a door I chose not to open. Gone. Taken by the man who framed her, while I was too busy drowning in my own trap to protect her.
The letter in my breast pocket burns against my chest. I chose you, Matteo.
She chose me.
And I let her be taken.
I stand up. The chair scrapes against concrete. Ricci flinches.
"Who else knows about the operation?"
"Just Dante and Sebastian. Everything ran through Sebastian."
I turn to Enzo. Whatever he sees on my face makes him straighten — not with fear, but with recognition.
He's seen this version of me before. The version that comes after the silence and the stillness and the careful, devastating calm.
The version that does not negotiate. The version that ends things.
"Bring Marco here. Have Ricci's confession documented and verified while we move — I want Sebastian's name on every link in the chain.
And call every man we have. Every lieutenant.
Every soldier. Everyone who's ever sworn loyalty to this family and meant it.
We find Sofia and we build the case at the same time.
I'm not waiting for paperwork while she's in his hands. "
"Where do we start looking?"
"Sebastian's properties. The penthouse, the waterfront, every warehouse and safe house we've ever flagged. Enzo, he took her to make a point. He'll keep her somewhere I'm meant to find — somewhere that proves he's in control. Think like him. Where does a man who wants to be king hold his hostage?"
Enzo nods. He's already on the phone before he reaches the door.
I walk out of the basement. The gray morning light hits my face. The city moves around me — cars, pedestrians, the ordinary machinery of a world that doesn't know what's about to happen.
I press my hand against the letter in my pocket. Her words against my heart. The truth I was too afraid to believe, carried now in the one place where it should have lived all along.
I'm coming for you, Sofia.
And God help the man who stands between us.