Page 117 of Made for Sinners

A private one? Cleaner. Quieter. But it wouldn’t have the same impact.

“He’s family,” Rafe said. “But he’s also a traitor.”

Luca leaned back, his eyes on the ceiling. “If we do it publicly, we risk backlash. If we do it privately, we risk looking weak.”

I rubbed a hand over my jaw. “We wait. We get the proof. And then we decide.”

They nodded.

But I could feel the tension in the room. The weight of what was coming.

Because no matter how we handled it, one thing was certain:

Rocco Conti was a dead man walking.

Later,I stood alone in the hallway outside the war room, staring out the tall, arched window that overlooked the estate grounds below.

The sky was a dull gray, the kind of overcast that made the world feel like it was holding its breath. The trees swayed gently in the breeze, the gravel driveway empty, the silence outside a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside me.

My reflection stared back at me in the glass—sharp suit, tighter jaw, eyes that looked more like my father’s every day. I hated that. I hated how much of him I saw in myself when I was like this—cold, calculating, ready to do what needed to be done no matter the cost.

But this wasn’t about business.

This was about betrayal.

Blood betrayal.

And that was something even I wasn’t numb enough to shrug off.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, the vibration sharp against my thigh. I pulled it out, expecting another message from Valentina or one of the guards.

It wasn’t.

It was her.

Emilia.

You okay?

Just two words.

Simple. Unassuming.

But they hit me harder than anything I’d heard in that war room.

I stared at the screen for a long moment, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. I could still see her face from this morning—soft with sleep, tangled in the sheets, her body warm against mine. I could still hear the way she’d said my name when I kissed her awake, the way she’d smiled like we had all the time in the world.

We didn’t.

And she knew it.

She’d seen the truth last night. She’d handed it to me with shaking hands and steady eyes, and now I was standing here, on the edge of a decision that would change everything.

A cousin. A traitor. A man I’d grown up with.

And I was going to have to kill him.

Because of her.

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