Chapter 2 - The Sins of a Syndicate
The silence in the private room stretched thin, heavy as spun glass.
Adrien stared at Emma. The child's question wasn't cute; it was a scar wearing a human face.
"Our real daddy left," Lily said softly, her small fingers smoothing the edge of the pink notebook. "Mommy did not know she was going to have us yet. He said he didn't want to be a daddy. He never came to see us in the hospital."
"He has never come at all," Sophie added, her pencil resting dead on the paper.
"Mommy had us by herself. Grandma was there," Lily continued, her voice dropping an octave. "But Grandma died last year."
Adrien felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. He knew about death. He lived in a world where men disappeared into the river or were buried under concrete foundations before sunrise. He understood violence, betrayal, and blood debts. But this—the slow, grinding attrition of a lonely mother raising three fatherless girls in a cramped apartment above a failing bakery—was a different kind of brutality.
"Mommy laughs at everything when we are with her," Sophie said, her lower lip trembling just a fraction. "She laughs when Emma spills the juice. She laughs when the oven burns the bottom of the cake."
She looked down at her lap. "But at night, when we pretend to be asleep, she sits at the kitchen table by herself. She stays there a long time. Sometimes she just holds her coffee. She doesn't drink it. She just holds it."
"She hasn't gone out with anyone," Emma said, her gaze unblinking. "Not in five years. Not one time. Tonight is the first time she wore the red dress."
"Grandma gave her that dress," Lily whispered. "Before."
Adrien felt the walls of his carefully constructed life closing in. For eleven years, since the night his own brother was gunned down in a turf war, Adrien had built a fortress around his heart. He ruled the Moretti syndicate with an iron fist and absolute detachment. Emotions were liabilities. Attachments were leverage points for enemies.
Yet here he sat, cross-examined by three five-year-old prosecutors in matching red dresses.
He placed both hands flat on the crisp white tablecloth, then slowly turned them palms up. An empty gesture. An honest gesture.
"I don't know your mommy yet," Adrien said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly register that commanded absolute attention. "But I promise you this. When I do—I will not lie to her about who I am."
Emma studied him for a long, agonizing heartbeat. Then, slowly, she nodded.
Before anyone could speak, the heavy oak door swung open, letting in a gust of crisp autumn air.
A woman rushed into the alcove, breathless, her hair escaping a loose clip, her hands dusted with powdered sugar. "Oh, my god," she gasped, her cheeks flushed pink. "I am so, so sorry. The tier slipped, and I—"
She stopped dead.
Her amber-brown eyes—the exact shade of the three sets of eyes staring up at him—landed on Adrien Moretti.
Adrien stood up slowly.
Up close, Clara Vance was not the polished, high-society debutante Dante had promised him. She wore a simple, elegant red dress that hugged her slight frame, but her apron was stained with buttercream, and her wrists bore the faint, pale scars of oven burns. She looked exhausted, beautiful, and utterly terrified.
"You're... you're Adrien," she breathed, clutching her bag like a shield.
"And you are late, Miss Vance," Adrien said, though the sharp edge was entirely missing from his tone. Instead, a slow, dangerous warmth began to thaw the ice around his heart. "Fortunately, your daughters conducted a very thorough interview in your absence. I passed."
Clara stared at him, then down at the three girls who were already packing the pink notebook away with businesslike efficiency.
"What did you tell him?" Clara hissed in a panicked whisper to Lily.
"We asked him if he's a cooker, if he likes kids, if he snores, and if he's going to leave you," Lily reported proudly. "He passed all of them, Mommy. Even the hard one."
Clara closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her temples, a deep blush crawling up her neck. "I am going to die right here on this floor."
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"Not on my watch," Adrien said smoothly, stepping around the table and pulling out the empty chair beside him. "Sit down, Clara. Let me order you a glass of wine. You've had a long night."
Little did Adrien know, the cake disaster at the bakery was only the beginning. Across town, a rival syndicate captain named Viktor Varga had just caught wind of Adrien’s blind date—and Varga was already moving his pieces to turn this fragile new spark into a bloodbath.
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