Chapter 19
Alex
I stepped into my mother’s library. The shelves smelled like sandalwood and old paper, just as they had when I was a child hiding among the stacks.
My fingers traced along the shelves at the back until I found what Sabine had seen earlier: the three matching volumes of The Oxford Library Collection of Poetry bound in blue leather. My mother's books.
I pulled the middle volume free. The weight felt familiar in my hands. The swirling silver B for Bellante caught the light as I turned it over, running my thumb across the monogram my father had commissioned when he still pretended to love her.
Inside the front cover, gold lettering proclaimed "Isabella Bellante" in an elegant script. The pages fell open naturally to Charlotte Smith. My mother had dog-eared this section, read it so many times the binding had weakened.
There in the margin beside "Reserves the thorn, to fester in the heart," I found her handwriting. Thin, precise letters in faded blue ink: “Like the one you left me, Matteo.”
I remembered finding her here once, tears sliding silently down her face, this same book open in her lap. I had been seven, maybe eight. She had quickly wiped her eyes, smiled, and pulled me onto her lap. "Poetry helps us feel less alone," she had told me, kissing the top of my head.
She had been planning her escape even then. I wondered if she had known, as she held me, that her husband would kill her if she ever tried to leave him.
Forty-two years married. She'd been happy for maybe ten of those years.
Last year, everything finally broke. A twenty-something with a pregnant belly showed up at our door during Sunday dinner, demanding money. When my mother confronted him later, my father laughed in her face. Exchanged eye rolls with my brothers, as if she were just being a hysterical woman.
That night, I found her in the kitchen at 3 AM, hands trembling around a mug of tea. "I can't do this anymore, Domenica," she whispered. Two weeks later, she contacted the FBI.
Someone must have seen her. Or maybe she spoke to an agent on my father’s payroll. It wouldn’t surprise me. However it happened, word reached my father within hours.
Three days later, she was dead. Shot in the head during a home invasion, if you listen to the 6 o'clock news. Completely believable, unless you start wondering how the guy got away when my brother and father were both there.
I knew how my father explained it: betrayal of the family is punishable by death.
The ultimate sin. I sat through that dinner, watching him cut his steak while he described how she'd been "handled.
" My brothers Lorenzo and Arturo nodded approvingly.
My brother Rocco stared at his plate. He loved Ma, but he would never speak against Matteo. No one would.
I said nothing. Just ate my dinner and thought about the look in her eyes that night in the kitchen. She hadn't been plotting betrayal. She'd been a woman who wanted to breathe without fear, to wake up without dread. To live.
I heard the soft tap of knuckles on hardwood before I saw Ellie in the doorway, her lean frame silhouetted against the hall light. She leaned one shoulder against the frame, arms folded across her chest.
"You okay?" she asked, voice gentle but direct.
I closed the book and slid it back into its place on the shelf. "Fine."
Ellie's eyes tracked my movements, then drifted to the painting on the far wall. "That painting has always creeped me out." She tilted her head, studying it. "Woman looks so damn sad."
I followed her gaze to the familiar image. The woman in the painting sat with her chin resting on her hand, eyes downcast, surrounded by dark foliage.
"It was my mother's favorite," I said. "Rossetti's 'Pia de' Tolomei.'"
"Original?" Ellie asked, curiosity flickering across her face.
"No. Just a very good print."
She nodded, then straightened. "How about Sabine? We good or is it going to be a problem?"
Classic Ellie. No preamble, just the assessment that mattered. It was why she made such a good medic—she could triage a situation in seconds.
"We're fine," I said. "She needed to understand the situation."
Ellie accepted this with a slight nod. "Kara's with her?"
"Probably." I didn't actually know, but it was a reasonable assumption. Kara was tough as nails, but she had an obvious soft spot for the reporter.
Ellie pushed off from the doorframe. "South gate camera feed is still down. Been trying to fix it but I’m getting nothing."
"I'll look at it," I said, and followed her into the hallway.
Our footsteps were muffled against the soft pile carpet.
The walnut doors lining the corridor gleamed with a subtle polish even in the low light.
I stole a glance at Sabine’s door. I’d have to have a real conversation with her sooner or later.
Ellie and I descended the stairs together, the red carpet runner absorbing the sound of our movement.
The house wrapped around us in secure silence, a fortress of my father’s design.
"You and Cam are on duty tonight," Ellie said, breaking the quiet. "She wants to make a run to town tomorrow for cat food. Those strays she found by the south gate are apparently permanent residents now."
I nodded, picturing Cam's stoic face softening around those tiny creatures. "I’ll tell her to take the black SUV. Less conspicuous than the Rover."
"Roger that," Ellie replied.
We reached the landing, and Ellie paused. "I'm going to grab a sandwich before I go to bed. Want one?"
"No, I’m good. I need to check that camera feed."
She nodded and headed toward the kitchen without another word. We didn't need many. Years of working together had made conversation optional. Comfortable silences were more common than not.
I continued down the hall to the command room, my sanctuary of screens and control panels. The door closed behind me with a satisfying click, and I settled into my chair, fingers already reaching for the keyboard. Time to fix whatever was wrong with the south gate cameras.
I settled into my chair and pulled up the camera diagnostics, fingers flying across the keyboard with practiced ease. The familiar click of keys grounded me as I scanned the feeds, looking for the problem. Again. I'd reset the damn thing twice already and it still wouldn’t show shit.
My body still hummed with adrenaline from earlier. Sabine's shocked face flashed in my mind—her wide eyes when I'd kissed her, the way her breath caught when Kara stepped in behind her. I could still feel her pulse racing under my fingers.
"It was necessary," I muttered to myself, isolating the camera feed and running a deeper diagnostic. "She needed to understand."
The system returned an error code. I frowned, digging deeper into the hardware specs. Sabine had looked so terrified between us, but she hadn't broken. Even with her world crashing down around her, learning I was Domenica Bellante, she'd held my gaze.
I glanced at the monitor showing her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, propped up on pillows, reading a book
"Focus," I told myself, returning to the camera issue. Kara had known exactly what I needed without words. We'd done this before, shared women. It was nothing new. Nothing special.
The diagnostic finally pinpointed a hardware failure. I grabbed a replacement module from the drawer, relieved to have something concrete to fix.
But Sabine's scent lingered on my skin, and I couldn't shake the feeling that this time, I might have broken something I couldn't repair.
My eyes flicked back to the monitor showing Sabine's bedroom. The fingers of one of her hands traced the hem of her nightgown. My throat tightened.
Why her? Because I couldn't trust a soul in my family's world. Moles everywhere. The cops were bought. The FBI had leaks. I'd seen it firsthand when my father got tipped off about raids three times in one year.
I needed someone clean. Someone already circling the truth.
When I first spotted Sabine at a press conference, firing questions that made my brother Lorenzo sweat, I knew.
I watched her for weeks after that. Followed her to coffee shops where she interviewed sources.
Tracked her bylines. Read everything she published.
Her persistence, her intelligence, her refusal to back down—all of it confirmed what I already knew.
She was perfect.
I set up this safe house long before her article went live. Assembled my team. Created contingencies.
The camera feed was still dead, and I forced myself to focus on the diagnostics again.
My brother’s Scorpions were hunting her.
If they found her, they would kill her, but not until they'd extracted every piece of information first. They'd want the name of her source.
They'd want my name. I couldn’t have that.
My stomach churned. The fear tactics with Sabine were necessary. Better to fear us enough that she stayed put, far away from the Scorpions. I told myself it was practical concern, nothing more.
They would never suspect me anyway. The baby sister. The grieving daughter who still visited her mother's grave every Sunday. I was hiding in plain sight on my mother’s favorite property, using my father's own training against him. The irony almost made me smile.
My father had taught me everything, thinking I'd protect the family. And I had, until he betrayed my mother. When they killed her, I knew I wouldn’t rest until Matteo and the Bellante family’s crimes were exposed.
I had become better than any of them. Better than what the military taught my team.
My brothers wouldn't look in my direction until it was far too late.
I met Kara, Ellie, and Cam when we all enlisted fresh out of high school.
They were raw talent, but I'd already been trained since I could walk.
My father made sure of that. While they sweated through basic, I noticed things they missed, corrected their form when the drill sergeants weren't looking.
I showed them how to disassemble a rifle blindfolded because that's how my brothers taught me.
I could have shown them how to flay the skin off a man too, but somehow we’d never gotten to that.
They went Special Forces together. I finished my service and returned to the family business, watching them from afar.
Years later, when Kara started her security company, I knew exactly who I wanted protecting me. The Bellante money paid their salaries, but my father never questioned it. "Smart girl," he'd said, patting my cheek. "In this family, we protect our assets."
I learned that lesson better than he had, I guessed.
Kara became more than my second-in-command. She was the first person who saw me, not just the Bellante princess. The night I told her my plan to bring down my family, she didn't hesitate. "We're in," she said, speaking for all of them.
The diagnostic finally pinpointed the issue with the camera. I replaced the blown component, and the feed flickered to life. The south gate appeared on screen, clear and secure. A small victory.
I stood and stretched, feeling the familiar weight of responsibility settle back onto my shoulders. These women were my real family now. I wouldn't fail them.
I padded into the living room at two in the morning, expecting emptiness. Instead, I found Cam crouched on the Italian carpet that had cost more than most cars. A scraggly calico cat lay curled beside her while three kittens tumbled across the floor like animated dust bunnies.
"Come on," Cam murmured, her voice softer than I'd ever heard it. She held out a can of tuna, patient as the smallest kitten batted at it suspiciously.
I leaned against the doorframe, watching.
The black and gray ink covering her forearms shifted as she carefully scooped tuna onto her finger for the hesitant kitten.
Her long black hair fell forward, obscuring her face, but I caught the gentle smile that would have shocked anyone who'd seen her break a man's jaw last month.
One of the bolder kittens attacked her bootlaces while another scaled her leg like a mountain.
I lowered myself to the floor nearby. The little orange kitten abandoned the tuna quest and approached me, tiny claws catching on my tactical pants as it climbed into my lap.
Its fur tickled my palm as I stroked it automatically, and a rumbling purr vibrated against my fingers.
Cam glanced up finally, nodding at me before returning to her feeding duties. Outside, the motion sensors and cameras kept watch. The team slept soundly in their rooms. Sabine was safe.
Everything was under control. For now.