The man who had sired me, who had favored Angelo and discarded me, who had tested me with violence against the only light in my world, was gone. Good riddance.
Leo wiped the blade clean on Edoardo’s ruined sleeve and straightened, breathing steady. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He answered it, expression neutral at first.
“Chiara.”
Then the color drained from his face. Ashen. Haunted.
Whatever Chiara said on the other end hit him like a gut shot.
I moved like lightning. My hand shot out, fisting the front of Leo’s shirt as I slammed him backward into the nearest wall with bone-jarring force. Plaster cracked. A painting rattled and fell. I pressed the barrel of my gun hard under his jaw, finger tight on the trigger.
“Talk,” I snarled, voice guttural, barely human. “Right fucking now, or I paint this wall with your brains.”
Leo didn’t resist. His hands stayed at his sides, but his eyes met mine with grim urgency. The Serpent knew better than to test me when I was like this.
“Chiara got a garbled call through on Aurora’s phone,” he said, voice low and strained. “It connected briefly before dropping. Sergio is alive. He has her. He’s the one who took Aurora.”
The world narrowed to white-hot rage.
Sergio.
The man I had shot point-blank in the face at the altar. The one whose blood had stained Aurora’s wedding dress. Alive. Breathing. Holding my woman, my pregnant woman, in his twisted, vengeful grip.
A primal roar tore from my throat. I shoved Leo harder into the wall, gun digging in until fresh blood trickled down his neck. Men shouted around us, weapons half-raised, but I couldn’t hear them. All I saw was red. Aurora’s terrified eyes. Her hand on her belly. Sergio’s hands on what was mine.
I released Leo only to drive my fist through the nearest antique table. Wood splintered violently. Glass shattered. Blood ran hot down my knuckles, but I felt nothing.
“Find him,” I growled at Leo, voice shaking with pure, volcanic fury. “Every safe house. Every rat hole. Every ghost connected to the old Families. I want Sergio dragged before me in chains. I want his head on a fucking spike before the sun rises. If he touches her, if he so much as breathes on her or my child, I will burn everything to the ground. Starting with you if you slow me down.”
The rage consumed me entirely. It wasn’t just anger. It was obsession unleashed. The Devil had been patient long enough.
War had come for Sergio.
And I would be its merciless end.
Thewarroombeneaththe estate pulsed with controlled chaos. Maps covered the long mahogany table, red pins marking every known associate of Sergio’s, every bolt-hole the bastard might have crawled into.
My men moved like shadows. Efficient, silent, lethal, updating feeds and coordinating strikes across the city. But the rage inside me refused to settle. It burned hotter with every passing minute, a living inferno fed by the image of Aurora in Sergio’s hands.
The door burst open. Chiara Ventura, now Moretti, stormed in like a hurricane wrapped in silk and fury. Her blonde hair was disheveled, eyes red-rimmed and blazing. Leo straightened, stepping toward her, but she brushed past him, gaze locking on me.
“Where is she?” Chiara demanded, voice cracking with raw desperation. “Tell me you have something, Santino. She’s my sister. My little sister. I can’t… I won’t lose her to this madness.”
She looked every bit the protective older sister who had once tried to shield Aurora from their father’s world. Now that world had swallowed her whole. Leo placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, stepping closer to me.
I met her eyes. The words tasted like ash, but she deserved the truth. They both did.
“She’s pregnant,” I said quietly, the admission slicing through the room like a blade. “With my child.”
Silence crashed down. Chiara’s face went pale, then flushed with a mix of horror and fierce determination. Leo’s jaw tightened, his serpent-calm fracturing for a split second.
“Pregnant,” Chiara whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth. Tears welled but didn’t fall. “Oh God, Aurora… She’s carrying your baby and Sergio has her.”
The revelation galvanized the room. Orders flew faster. Men moved with renewed urgency. Chiara demanded to be part of the search, refusing to be sidelined.
“She’s my blood. I know how she thinks. If there’s any chance she can signal us…”
Leo didn’t argue. He simply pulled her against his side, murmuring something low in her ear that seemed to steady her. The desperation in the air thickened. A pregnant woman in the hands of a broken, vengeful ghost. Time was no longer a luxury.
