Built on a Lie
────────
Even in the best room this hospital has to offer, the stench of antiseptic and dying breath clings to the walls. The air is thick with it—clinical, sterile, and still laced with the inescapable scent of death.
It’s too bright in here—whitewashed death under fluorescent light.
I sit beside the bed, motionless, staring at the man who once ruled with a voice that could crack stone and hands that never shook.
Now, those hands twitch with tremors. That voice is a gravelly whisper drowning beneath oxygen tubes and regret.
Vittorio Moretti.
My father.
The head of the Moretti crime family—the architect behind the boy who was once a prince and is now the newly appointed Don. He didn’t just raise me. He forged me, piece by brutal piece, in his own image. And in doing so, he taught me how to destroy everything I loved.
He turns to me, and for a second—just one fragile, faltering breath—I see him as something I never expected: vulnerable. There are tears in his eyes, clouded with age and regret, and his hand trembles as he tries to lift his oxygen mask.
I help him, because even now, even after everything, I can't watch him struggle.
His lips move at first without sound. Then, hoarse and broken: “You were wrong about her.”
I freeze.
“It wasn’t her choice,” he whispers, voice like rusted metal scraping through glass. “I regret what I did but it was the only way. I told myself it was for your own good, for the family—but the truth is, I was afraid to lose you too.”
His eyes gloss over, and he looks past me, like he’s confessing to a priest. “You were too young, too full of fire. Love would’ve softened you. She would’ve taken you away from all of it. From your place at the head of the family. I couldn’t let that happen.”
He coughs hard, a broken gasp tearing from his chest. “I can’t take this with me. Not this. I thought I was building a legacy—but I started with a lie. And now I’m dying with it in my lungs.”
His breath rattles. “Your destiny was to lead, not to fall in love.”
A bitter laugh scratches the back of my throat.
He looks away like he can’t bear the weight of his own words. “I told her if she didn’t disappear, I’d make sure she had nothing left to protect. I thought… it was the only way to keep you apart.”
My blood runs cold.
A hundred questions explode in my head all at once.
“What the hell are you saying?” I demand, the disbelief clawing up my throat. “You threatened her? Forced her to leave?”
My voice shakes—not from weakness, but from the kind of rage that only comes when the past is ripped wide open and everything inside it is a lie.
His eyes flutter, yellowed and cracked like old parchment. “I told her to disappear and never come back to Chicago, or I would bury her.”
I stare at him, every breath slicing like broken glass.
He coughs, a wet, hollow sound. “I was wrong. I’ve had to live with it and watch you turn that love into hate.”
His fingers twitch, reaching for mine, brittle and desperate. “But I need something from you before I go.”
I stare at him, jaw tight.
“I need your forgiveness,” he rasps. “I can’t face what’s coming with this between us. I need to believe… that you understand why I did it, even if it was wrong.”
I say nothing.
“If you give me that,” he adds, weaker now, “I’ll tell you where they went. Where I sent them. Everything I kept from you, I’ll lay bare. Just… don’t let me take this sin to my grave.”
I rise from the chair slowly. Deliberately. My hands are fists. My heart? It’s something worse.
Because I remember the night I thought she betrayed me. The day she vanished without a word. And now, sitting here beneath a halo of machines and lies, I realize everything I built from that pain—every ruthless step I took to become the man I am—was built on the wrong fucking enemy.
I turn my back to him, the weight of it all crashing down in silence. The girl I thought destroyed me? He destroyed her first.
I close my eyes for half a breath.
When I turn back—he’s gone.
His chest has stilled. His eyes are open but empty. The machines hum quietly beside him, indifferent to the man they were too late to save.
He took the location to his grave.
The bastard never told me where she went.
—
Outside, the Chicago night doesn’t care.
The city is alive with its usual sins— seduction, whispered threats, deals sealed with blood. I walk the pavement like a ghost, the heat rising off the concrete no match for the fury simmering beneath my skin.
Every step echoes with the memory of that night—driving to her house, running up the walkway, only to find the place gutted. Empty. Gone. It was like the entire family had never existed. Eighteen years of history erased in a single breath.
I stood in that doorway, fists clenched, rage boiling in my veins.
I convinced myself she was weak. That she couldn’t stomach the life we were stepping into.
That she didn’t love me—not enough to stay, not enough to fight.
I cursed her name, hated her more with each passing day until the anger became my armor.
But the truth was?
She didn’t run.
She was erased. Erased by the same man who crowned me in blood and called it legacy.
She wasn’t weak—she was sacrificed.
I stop when I realize I am at the edge of the hospital's rooftop parking garage, staring upward toward a kingdom we call Heaven. The city pulses below, a vein of wealth and corruption I own. Somewhere out there, she’s breathing the same air, carrying a truth I should have known.
I clench my fists at my sides with tears welling up in my eyes.
Guiliana, I scream. I am sorry!
—
I don’t remember the drive to the penthouse.
One minute I’m on that rooftop, fists full of fury and memory—the next, I’m in the elevator, staring at my reflection in the polished chrome, jaw tight, blood roaring in my ears. I look like my father now. Cold. Unmoved. A man carved by legacy and violence.
But inside, I am wounded.
The doors open to the top floor with a soft chime, and I step into the silence of my private fortress. Glass walls frame the skyline like a battlefield. The room is all steel and shadow—like me. A shrine to power. Control. Solitude.
I head straight for the ledger.
It’s black, leather-bound, and older than some of my enemies. I don’t use it for business. Not the official kind. This book is personal. Names that cost me something. Names that owe me something. Names I swore I’d never forget.
I flip to a fresh page.
Her name comes out before I even realize I’ve spoken.
“Giuliana Vitale.”
Her name slices through the air like a vow.
I write it in ink so dark it looks like blood. Then I circle it—once, slow. Deliberate.
She was taken from me. Buried in lies. But now she’s risen like a ghost, and I have to find her. Not just for closure. Not just for vengeance.
For the truth.
Because if my father tore us apart, I want to know why.
She had to have changed her name. I know she did. Because I looked for her for years, when the rage still burned fresh and I thought she’d walked away by choice—I searched every database, every backdoor, every digital shadow. And got nowhere. It was like she’d never existed.
But I know better now.
I lift my phone, dialing my most trusted contact. “I want you to find Guiliana Vitale,” I say, voice low and dangerous. “I don’t care what it takes.”
I don’t wait for confirmation. I don’t need promises—I need results.
The line goes dead. I toss the phone onto the desk and stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows as the city crawls beneath me. Every light, every shadow, every flicker of life—it all belongs to me. Or it did.
Hours later, there’s a knock on the penthouse door—sharp, deliberate. I buzz it open, and my contact steps inside without a word, dropping a file onto the bar.
"Preliminary hit," he says. "Vegas. Might be nothing—but the alias checks out. Art world. Ties to a new luxury exhibit."
I flip open the folder. There it is. The whisper of a trail. A sliver of the past wrapped in a present I’m finally close enough to touch. It’s not confirmed yet—but it’s more than I’ve had in years.
I pour a glass of scotch I won’t drink and take a closer look at the flyer. It’s worn and grainy but it's her. I know it. A fucking art exhibit. That’s where she’s hiding—in a world of canvas and glass. Curating other people’s illusions while masking her own.
Her name isn’t on it. Not the one I knew. But the signature on the press release? Julia Bean.
The alias is clever—mundane, forgettable. But to me, it might as well be a knife.
It was the name on the press badge the day we went to Millennium Park.
Our first date. She dragged me to see the Cloud Gate sculpture—The Bean.
Said it was her favorite piece of public art, because it reflected everyone, yet belonged to no one.
I remember her laugh echoing under the curve of stainless steel, her eyes wide with wonder like the world had cracked open just for her.
She used it. Our memory. Our moment. Turned it into a mask.
Now it’s a weapon.
I trace her alias with my thumb, rage twisting inside me like a wire pulled too tight. She didn’t just disappear. She buried herself in a new life. A life where I didn’t exist.
I lean back in the chair, fingers steepled under my chin. The truth’s out there—stitched into paint, inked into contracts, whispered through gallery corridors. I’ve taken down empires with less intel.
She thinks she can stay hidden in the light?
She forgot who taught me how to move in the dark.
I reach for the encrypted tablet and pull up the city’s security grid. My voice is ice. “Cross-reference Lux Gallery staff and aliases used in the last six years. If she’s breathing—I want eyes on her by midnight.”