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“And nothing changed.” Another lie, but this one I need to believe.

Chiara searches my face, and I know she sees through me. She’s always been able to see through me.

“You still love him,” she says quietly.

“I hate him.”

“You can do both.” Her voice softens. “But you can’t let love make you stupid, Aria. Not when so many people are counting on you.”

Before I can respond, my phone buzzes with a text from Ettore:Emergency meeting. One hour. Bring Chiara.

I show her the message, and something cold settles in my chest.

“We need to go,” I tell her.

An hour later, we’re in the same smoky room where I first claimed my birthright as a DeLuca. But the atmosphere has changed. Where before there was cautious optimism, now there’s urgency bordering on panic.

Ettore stands at the head of the table. The seven family heads cluster around the mahogany table, their faces grim.

“What’s the emergency?” I ask, taking my seat at Ettore’s right hand. Chiara slides in beside me.

“Salvatore knows,” Lorenzo Venucci says. The elderly patriarch’s voice carries the weight of his eighty years. “About you. About the baby. About everything.”

My blood turns to ice water. “How?”

“The newspaper article.” Franco Rossi pushes a folded paper across the table. “It made the front page of every major publication in the city. Your emergence wasn’t as subtle as we hoped.”

I scan the article quickly, my heart sinking with each line. They have everything—my identity, my marriage to Marco, even speculation about my “condition.” The photograph shows me at the gala, radiant and defiant, surrounded by my new allies.

“It gets worse,” Ettore says, his hazel eyes dark with worry. “Our sources say Salvatore went into a rage when he saw it. He’s mobilizing everything—every soldier, every weapon, every dirty cop on his payroll. He wants you dead, Aria.”

“And Marco?” The question slips out before I can stop it.

Ettore’s expression shifts, becomes carefully neutral. “Our intel suggests he’s… resistant to his father’s plans.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s protecting you,” one of the twin brothers says, his tone sharp enough to cut. “Even now, after everything you’ve done to his operations, he won’t move against you.”

I should feel relief. Instead, I feel a complicated knot of emotions I don’t have time to untangle.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, forcing steel into my voice. “Marco’s loyalties don’t change our mission. If anything, this confirms what we already knew—Salvatore Bianchi is a monster who needs to be stopped.”

“The question is how,” says the bearded man missing an ear. “He’s built like a fortress—manpower, money, everything.”

“Then we don’t give him time to use them,” I interrupt, an idea crystallizing in my mind. “We strike first. While he’s still mobilizing, before he can coordinate a proper assault.”

The room falls silent. Seven pairs of eyes stare at me, weighing my words.

“That’s suicide,” Franco says finally. “We’re not ready for a full-scale war.”

“We’re never going to be ready,” I counter, rising to my feet. The movement draws every eye in the room. “Salvatore has had twenty-five years to build his empire. We’ve had weeks. Time isn’t on our side.”

“What are you proposing?” Ettore asks, though I can see in his eyes that he already knows.

“We end this. Within the week. We take out Salvatore Bianchi and anyone who stands with him.” I place my hands flat on the table, leaning forward. “Every weapons cache we’ve acquired, every man we’ve recruited, every favor we’re owed—we use it all. We hit them so hard and so fast that they don’t have time to regroup.”

“And if Marco stands with his father?” Lorenzo asks quietly.