Page 141 of The Silent War
“We staging formal?” He asked.
“Formal. Black cloth, closed caskets, rings on top. Courieredby our men, ledgers in hand. We’ll cut them in their own foyers.”
He nodded. “You want me on the Salveres?”
“Take Galleo. They’ll stand with lawyers. I want their mouths full of paper while we shut their ports.”
He huffed a laugh with no humor in it. “Done.”
The doors opened into Syndicate floors that breathed. I inhaled and felt my lungs ease for the first time since the trunk.
Rome clapped my shoulder once and, already putting his phone against his ear.
Chapter Forty-Two
EMILIA
I dropped onto the couch and stared blankly at the muted television across the room.
The headline at the bottom of the screen was already screaming at me in red.
TRAGEDY STRIKES: Ten dead in overnight crash, private dynasty vehicle confirmed.
The feed rolled through the details—black limo, diplomatic clearance, central overpass. Discovered by security teams at 3:41 a.m. All passengers confirmed dead.
The camera cut to wreckage: twisted black metal under flashing lights, sirens bleeding red into the night.
Then the photos.
Salvere. Vale. Galleo.
Three heirs whose names had lived on every draft of every proposal I’d been handed in the last six months.
And then his face.
Alaric Vale.
Dead.
My chest locked. My ears rang.
I thought of his thumb brushing my lip at dinner, the tasteof osso buco heavy in my mouth. The box sealed with his family crest, still sitting unopened on my dresser.
My fiancé.
Not just a man at a table, not just a merger drafted behind closed doors. A future already sealed in ink.
Gone in an instant.
“…He will be dead by morning.”Luca’s voice dragged over me, memory sharp, his mouth at my ear.“I’ll make it look like an accident. Can’t have our beautiful girl losing sleep.”
I hadn’t believed him. I thought it was jealousy, a scare tactic.
But Alaric Vale was dead.
And so was the marriage.
I exhaled hard, relief washing through. Because it meant I would never have to sign my child away. Never have to hand them to dynasty tutors and watch their name erased from mine.
