Chapter 4 - The House of Paranoia
The grand library of the Vance manor was a vault of silence, sealed behind solid oak doors and biometric locks. Lorenzo stood behind his desk, his coat shed, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the faint scars crisscrossing his forearms. On the leather sofa across from him sat Elena, her arms wrapped protectively around little Leo, who was currently occupied with a silver letter opener he had mistaken for a toy sword.
By the door, Dante Russo stood with his arms crossed, his right hand resting casually near the grip of his sidearm. His face was a mask of thunderous suspicion.
“I pulled the employment logs from the server,” Dante said, his voice hard. “She wasn't processed through my security division. Her background check, her medical clearance, her residency permits—they were all rubber-stamped and bypassed using an internal executive override code.”
“Whose code?” Lorenzo asked without taking his eyes off the little boy playing on the sofa.
Dante hesitated, his jaw tightening. “Victor Thorne’s.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. Victor Thorne had been the bedrock of the Vance estate since Lorenzo was a teenager in boarding school. He had managed the transitions of power, buried their dead, and kept the books spotless. The idea of Victor smuggling an undocumented woman and Matteo’s alleged bastard son into the compound without informing Lorenzo was more than a breach of protocol; it was an act of treason.
“Bring Victor to the study,” Lorenzo commanded quietly. “No guards. Just you.”
“Boss,” Dante warned, taking a step forward. “If Victor is playing a double game, isolating yourself with this woman—who could be a honeytrap sent by the Romanos or the Greeks—is a tactical error.”
“Look at the kid, Dante,” Lorenzo said, pointing a finger at little Leo.
Dante turned his sharp gaze toward the sofa. Leo looked up from the silver letter opener, tilting his head with a curious, defiant smirk. In the overhead lighting of the library, the boy’s eyes weren't just brown or hazel; they were striking, luminous amber—the exact, unmistakable shade of the Vance bloodline, a dominant genetic trait passed down from Lorenzo’s grandfather through Dominic, Lorenzo, and Matteo.
Dante cursed softly under his breath. “Jesus Christ. He looks like Matteo did when we were running the alleys in Little Italy.”
“Exactly,” Lorenzo said. “Now go fetch Victor. And Dante? If Victor reaches for his pocket, shoot him in the shoulder. I want him alive to answer my questions.”
Once Dante slipped out of the room, Lorenzo walked over to the sofa and sat down on the leather armchair opposite Elena. She pulled Leo closer to her chest, her gray scullery uniform stark against the opulence of the room.
“Why now?” Lorenzo asked, his tone softening just a fraction. “If Matteo was his father, why hide in the slums for five years? Why come to my kitchen as a scrub maid instead of walking through the front gate and claiming your son’s birthright?”
Elena let out a bitter, humorless laugh. “Claim his birthright? Don Vance, do you really believe your brother died in a random highway robbery outside Milwaukee?”
Lorenzo’s amber eyes turned glacial. “I killed the men who took credit for it.”
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“You killed the pawns,” Elena said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Matteo knew he was being hunted by someone inside this very house. He told me that if anything happened to him, I was to run, change my name, and never let anyone in your family know I was pregnant. He said the man who orchestrated Uncle Dominic’s poisoning fifteen years ago was still pulling the strings from the shadows. I only came here because three weeks ago, two men broke into my apartment in the city asking for Matteo’s journal. Victor Thorne found me hiding in an alley that same night and brought me here, promising safety.”
Lorenzo’s hand instinctively went to his breast pocket, his fingers tracing the cold brass of Uncle Dominic’s lighter. The man who orchestrated Uncle Dominic’s poisoning. For fifteen years, Lorenzo had believed Dominic was murdered by a rival family. If Matteo had discovered the truth before he died—and if Victor was the one who brought Elena into the fortress—the pieces of a terrifying, decades-long betrayal were finally beginning to align.
