Chapter 10 - The Traitor in the Shadows
As Marco and Dominic turned to drag the hysterical blonde out of the grand ballroom, the room grew suffocatingly tense.
Elena suddenly stiffened in her father’s embrace, her entire body seizing with a fresh, paralyzing wave of terror.
Her slender, bruised hands reached out and clamped tightly around Salvatore’s left wrist with desperate, white-knuckled force.
The sheer desperation of her grip stopped the mafia billionaire completely in his tracks.
"Elena? What is it, sweetheart?" Salvatore asked softly, turning his head to look down into her panicked hazel eyes.
Elena was not looking at the retreating figure of Victoria Sterling, nor was she looking at the opened wooden chest.
Her terrified gaze was locked onto the crowd of thirty-five wealthy socialites, trusted lieutenants, and extended family members.
Her breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, her chest heaving as if the suffocation of the chest had returned.
She leaned in close to her father's ear, her trembling lips brushing against his cheek as she raised a shaking finger.
"Wait... Dad, please, don't let them leave..." she whispered, her cracked voice trembling with unimaginable horror.
Salvatore raised a single hand, instantly freezing Marco and Dominic in their tracks near the side exit doors.
The entire ballroom held its breath, the silence so profound that the crackle of the holiday fireplace sounded like thunder.
Elena swallowed hard, her eyes darting across the familiar faces of men and women who had sworn loyalty to her bloodline.
She remembered the heavy hands that had helped Victoria hold the lid down while she screamed in the dark.
She remembered the second pair of footsteps pacing outside the wood before the brass latch was hammered shut.
Tears spilled freshly over her lashes as she gripped Salvatore's wrist so hard that her fingernails bit into his flesh.
"Dad..." she whimpered, her voice rising into a sharp, terrifying scream that shattered the fragile silence of the room.
"SHE WASN'T ALONE!"
Salvatore froze entirely, the color draining from his face as a monstrous realization gripped his soul.
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His piercing gray eyes slowly moved across the crowded room, staring into the faces of the people he had trusted with his life.
Somewhere among his closest friends, his blood relatives, and his top associates, stood the monster who had helped cage his child.
