Chapter 8 - A Traitor Inside the Moretti Family
Serafina stared at him.
“You told me you never met my father.”
“I thought I hadn't.”
“What does that mean?”
Dorian rubbed blood from his mouth.
“Seven years before we met, I was twenty-four. I drove deliveries for a private courier company.”
Nikolai went still.
“What company?”
“Blackwell.”
Nikolai cursed.
Dorian continued.
“One night I delivered a medical package to an estate outside the city. A man signed for it.”
“Who?”
“I didn't know then.”
“But now?”
Dorian looked at the captured Adrian Voss.
“Voss.”
Voss smiled.
Serafina felt cold.
“What was in the package?”
“I never knew.”
Voss answered.
“The poison.”
Dorian lunged.
Nikolai stopped him.
“You used me.”
Voss laughed.
“You were a courier.”
Serafina looked at Dorian.
He had unknowingly carried the substance that killed her father.
Dorian looked devastated.
“Sera—”
“You didn't know.”
He stared at her.
She repeated it.
“You didn't know.”
That did not erase their marriage.
Or Vivian.
But Serafina refused to punish a man for a crime committed through him without his knowledge.
Police sirens approached.
Voss smiled.
“You're missing the important part.”
Serafina looked at him.
“Which is?”
“Your father didn't die because of the poison.”
Nikolai's face changed.
Voss saw it.
“There it is.”
Serafina turned slowly toward Nikolai.
“What is he talking about?”
Voss leaned back against the wall.
“The poison weakened Salvatore. Someone else finished the job.”
“Nikolai?”
The older man looked broken.
“I found him.”
Serafina's throat tightened.
“He was still alive?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He asked me not to call an ambulance.”
“Why?”
“He knew there was a traitor. He believed the hospital would finish what the poison started.”
“What did you do?”
“I stayed with him.”
Serafina's eyes filled.
“You let him die.”
“I obeyed him.”
The room went silent.
Nikolai reached into his jacket.
Dorian moved.
But Nikolai withdrew a folded letter.
“He made me promise to give you this only if Protocol Seventeen was activated.”
Serafina opened it.
Her father's handwriting.
Little star,
If you are reading this, the past has finally found you.
Trust Nikolai.
Trust your own judgment.
And above all, understand this: power is not inherited by the person who wants it most. It belongs to the person willing to walk away from it.
At the bottom was another sentence.
The traitor carries my blood.
Serafina looked at Elena.
Elena stared back.
“No.”
Nikolai shook his head.
“Salvatore had no other children.”
Rosa suddenly sat down.
Everyone looked at her.
“Rosa?”
She began crying.
“I lied.”
Serafina approached.
“About what?”
“Your father had a son.”
The words emptied the room.
“Who?”
Rosa looked toward the warehouse entrance.
A figure stood there.
Julian Cross.
He wasn't alone.
Beside him stood a man Serafina had known for seven years.
A man she had welcomed into her home.
Dorian whispered his name.
May you like
“Marcus?”
And Dorian's younger brother smiled.
