Chapter 8 - The Diary's Poison
Hours passed before Dante's men cleared the estate and declared it safe.
We emerged from the bunker into a house scarred by bullets and stained with blood.
Dante immediately went to coordinate his retaliation, leaving me under heavy guard in a new, secure wing.
Once I was alone with a sleeping Leo, I pulled Elena's diary from my pocket.
I needed to read the rest of her final entry before Dante returned.
My eyes scanned the elegant, frantic handwriting.
"The Volkovs have contacted me."
"They know about my twin sister, Mara, the one my mother hid away to save from the syndicate."
"They promised me safe passage out of the country if I give them the codes to Dante's private accounts."
My blood ran cold as I read my own name written by a stranger's hand.
Elena had known about me.
"Dante found out I was speaking to them," the final sentence read.
"He looked at me with those cold, dead eyes, and I know he is going to kill me tonight."
I dropped the book onto the floor like it was burning my skin.
Dante hadn't failed to protect his wife from a rival cartel's fire.
He had started the fire himself.
He murdered my sister for her betrayal.
Nausea swept through me in violent waves as I stared at the door.
The man who had touched my face with such surprising tenderness in the dark was a monster who executed his own wife.
And now, I was living in her room, raising her child, wearing her face.
A sharp tap on the window made me jump.
I pulled back the heavy curtain to see one of the guards, a man I had never spoken to, standing on the balcony.
He pressed a burner phone against the glass.
I slowly opened the window, taking the phone from his gloved hand.
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"They want to speak to the sister," the guard whispered, revealing himself as a Volkov spy.
"Answer it, or we burn the rest of the house down with the baby inside."
