Chapter 7 - THE TRAITOR UNMASKED
The smoke from the firefight had barely cleared when the heavy oak doors of the study pushed open once more. This time, it wasn't an assassin.
Marcus, Dante's head of security—the man with the broken nose who had met us at the restaurant—strode into the room, followed by four loyal guards dragging a kicking, screaming figure between them.
My breath hitched. It was Mrs. Gable, the older maid who had brought me breakfast not an hour ago. Her gray hair was disheveled, and her polite, maternal facade had completely melted away into a mask of venomous hatred.
"Let me go, you ungrateful bastard!" Mrs. Gable shrieked, spitting onto the polished floor as Dante rose slowly to his feet, towering over her like an executioner.
Dante didn't yell. His voice was dangerously soft, dropping to a temperature that could freeze liquid nitrogen. "You. Twenty years of service. My father trusted you. I trusted you."
"Your father was a tyrant, and you're just as bad!" Mrs. Gable snarled, her eyes darting frantically toward me before locking back onto Dante. "You thought you could bury the past in Maine? You thought you could keep playing king while the real syndicate bled out? I gave the order to take out Elena three years ago, and I gave the order to breach this fortress today! It's poetic justice that her bratty little twin sister was the one who walked right back into the lion's den to finish the job!"
I felt a cold shiver crawl down my spine. The woman who had raised me—my "aunt"—hadn't just been hiding me; she had been taking blood money from this monster standing right in front of us.
Dante didn't blink. He slowly unholstered his sidearm, the click of the safety disengaging sounding like a guillotine blade dropping in the quiet room.
"Dante," I said softly, stepping forward with Leo still cradled safely in one arm. I laid my free hand gently on his broad forearm. "Don't."
Dante looked down at me, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. "She tried to kill you, Alina. She tried to kill my wife, and she just tried to slaughter everyone in this house."
"I know," I said, my voice steady, surprising even myself. "Let the courts—or your family tribunal—handle her. Don't let her drag you down into the mud. You have a son who needs a father, not a prison cell or a firing squad."
Dante stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. The dark storm raging in his eyes slowly began to recede, beaten back by the quiet, grounding warmth of my hand on his arm. With a slow, deliberate breath, he re-engaged the safety and holstered his weapon.
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"Take her to the lower holding cells," Dante commanded Marcus without breaking eye contact with me. "Lock her down. Nobody speaks to her. Nobody touches her. We deal with her trial at dawn."
As Mrs. Gable was dragged away, screaming obscenities down the grand hallway, the heavy silence of the estate rushed back in to fill the void.
