Page 404 of Rosetti Family New York
My throat goes dry. The leather chair creaks as I lean back, processing. "What kind of proof?"
"The kind that changes everything." Emilio's fingers move across his keyboard, sharp clicks echoing through the connection. "Remember that contact we had in Chase's organization? The one who disappeared six months ago?"
"Vaguely."
"He didn't disappear. He died. But not before he copied some files to an encrypted drive. His widow just came forward." Emilio's fingers move across his keyboard, the familiar sound of my twin at work. "I've been analyzing the data all night. Matt, this is worse than we thought."
The screen flickers, and suddenly I'm looking at grainy surveillance footage. The timestamp reads fifteen years ago. My mouth tastes like copper as I watch Chase Callahan walk through what looks like a warehouse, his face calm and businesslike. Young. Ambitious. Hungry.
"Keep watching," Emilio says quietly.
The footage cuts to another angle. Chase is talking to someone off-camera, his body language animated. Angry. Then he nods, like he's agreeing to something, and walks away.
The camera pans, following his movement. And there, in the background, I see them. A man and woman, both dark-haired, both terrified. Blood on their clothes. Their hands bound behind their backs.
Isabella's parents.
My hands clench into fists. The laptop screen blurs for a moment, and I have to blink to focus. These people raised the woman sleeping in my bed. Sang her lullabies. Kissed her scraped knees. And Chase fucking Callahan ordered them executed like they were nothing.
"There's more." Emilio's voice cuts through the roar in my head. "I found the audio buried in the metadata."
The sound is tinny, distorted, but clear enough. Chase's voice, fifteen years younger but unmistakably him.
"Make it look like an accident. A robbery gone wrong, or a car accident. Whatever. The girl can't know the truth."
"What about the will?" Another voice, one I don't recognize.
"I'll handle the will. Isabella gets the trust fund, the foundation, all the pretty things that keep her happy and quiet. But the real empire stays with me."
The recording cuts to static. I stare at the screen, my chest tight with rage. Every muscle in my body screams for violence. For blood. For the satisfaction of putting my hands around Chase's throat and squeezing until his eyes bulge. The womansleeping in my bed, the woman who trusts me, who calls me her safety—she's been living a lie her entire life.
"We've got bank records too," Emilio continues. "Forged documents. Chase has been using her as a front, making her the legitimate face of an empire built on her parents' blood."
I can't breathe properly. The air in the office feels thin, suffocating. "She doesn't know. She doesn't know any of it."
"No. But she will. And when she does, she'll be more than just Chase's weakness. She'll be his greatest threat."
The truth settles over me like ice water. Isabella isn't just leverage anymore. She's not just the woman I've been falling for despite every instinct telling me to run. She's the rightful heir to an empire, the one person who can destroy Chase Callahan completely.
And she's lying naked in my bed, trusting me to keep her safe.
"There's something else," Emilio continues, his voice grimmer. "Our sources say Chase is planning to clean house. He's been letting her live because she was useful, controllable. But now that she's been with us, now that she's seen behind the curtain..."
The words taste like ash. "He'll kill her."
"He'll try. Question is, are we going to let him?"
I close my eyes, thinking about Isabella's nightmares. The way she flinches when people mention her parents. The gaps in her memory that she's always been afraid to examine. She's been living in a cage of lies, and she doesn't even know it.
"Send me everything," I say. "Every file, every recording, every piece of evidence."
"Matt—"
"Send it all. She deserves to know the truth."
"Are you sure about this?" Emilio asks, and I hear something in his voice I've never heard before. Worry. For me. "Once she knows, there's no going back. She'll never be the same."
I think about the woman upstairs, about the way she looks at me like I'm her whole world. About the trust in her eyes when she tells me she's not afraid of me anymore. About the way she surrenders to me completely, body and soul.
