Chapter 14 - The Traitor Among Us
The ride back to the estate was suffocatingly tense. The charity gala had been a battlefield, and Victor Moretti had fired the first shot without pulling a single trigger.
Damian was furiously texting his network, pulling favors and calling in heavily armed loyalists from his past life. I sat in the back of the SUV, my mind racing through the horrific implications of Victor's threat.
He knew too much. He knew about Leah and Leo, he knew about Lorenzo's ring, and someone had let his messenger into our nursery.
The next morning, I took it upon myself to watch our staff. Damian was locked in his study organizing a counter-strike, leaving me to navigate the psychological warfare happening in our own hallways.
I sat in the kitchen, pretending to read a magazine while Maria, our elderly nanny, prepared lunch. Silas, our head of security, walked in to grab a bottle of water. He was a tall, stoic man who had taken bullets for Damian in the past.
But as his phone buzzed on the granite counter, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the screen. The message read: "The wife suspects nothing. Tonight at the docks."
My blood ran ice cold. Silas. The man who stood outside my children's bedroom every night was the rat.
I didn't gasp, I didn't confront him. I simply smiled politely, picked up my magazine, and walked calmly out of the kitchen. The moment I was out of sight, I sprinted to Damian's study, locking the heavy doors behind me.
"It's Silas," I breathed, my hands shaking violently as I leaned against the door. Damian looked up from his blueprints, his brow furrowing in disbelief.
"Silas is meeting someone at the docks tonight. I saw the text. He is the one who let them into the nursery."
Damian's expression shattered, morphing from shock into a terrifying, cold-blooded fury. The betrayal cut incredibly deep. "I will kill him right now," Damian swore, standing up and reaching for his weapon.
"No," I stopped him, rushing forward to grab his arm. "If you kill him now, Victor will know we are onto them. We have to use him, Damian."
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"We feed him false information. We set a trap at the docks and end the Moretti threat before they ever get near our children."
Damian looked at me, a profound mixture of awe and dark pride settling in his eyes. The quiet waitress he had met five years ago was entirely gone. I was the wife of a king, and I was learning exactly how to play the game of monsters.
