Page 16 of His Savage Ruin
These are my brothers in blood if not all in birth. The men I trust with my life, my empire, my secrets. But as I study each face, Ican't shake the nagging certainty that one of them isn't who he appears to be.
"Sit," I command, taking my position at the head of the table. The chair has been in my family for three generations—dark wood and Italian leather, worn smooth by the hands of dead men who understood that power is never given, only taken.
Enzo speaks first, as always. "Clean exit. No casualties on our side. The Moretti hitters were amateur hour—desperate, sloppy, more concerned with speed than precision."
"How many?" I ask, though I already know the answer. I counted the bodies myself.
"Seven dead, one captured alive," Rafael reports, cracking his knuckles. "The survivor's sedated in the basement. He'll be ready to talk when you are."
I nod, filing that information away. A live prisoner means intelligence, but it also means risk. The Morettis will know we have one of their own, and they'll be planning accordingly.
"The breach concerns me more than the attack itself," Dante says, his politician's voice carrying the kind of measured gravity that makes senators confess their sins. "They knew exactly when we'd be moving her. Knew the route, the timing, the security complement."
The silence that follows cuts through the room like a blade.
We've all been thinking it, but hearing it spoken aloud makes it real. Makes it dangerous.
"Inside information," Luca confirms, his voice tight with barely contained fury. "Someone fed them everything they needed to plan this ambush."
My jaw tightens. I grip the table until the wood creaks. The air in the room goes still. Someone close to me has sold us out, and I’ll deal with it the only way I know—blood for blood.
"Immediate measures," I say, my voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "Double the perimeter. Rotate all access codes. Isolate communication channels until we identify the leak." I pause, letting each word settle into their bones. "I want a full internal investigation. Everyone with access to operational intelligence. Everyone who knew about the transport."
"That's a lot of people, boss," Rafael observes, but there's no challenge in his tone. Just acknowledgment of the scope of what we're facing.
"Then we cast a wide net." I lean forward, placing my hands flat on the table. "Disloyalty is a cancer. If we don't cut it out completely, it spreads until it kills the host."
The silence that follows carries the weight of shared history. They all know what betrayal cost my family seventeen years ago. They know what I did to the man who sold my father's life for Moretti gold.
My uncle Arian. The man who raised me after my mother died, who taught me to shoot, who sat at this very table planning the "peace meeting" that would end the Romano-Moretti war. The man whose throat I crushed with my bare hands when I discovered he'd orchestrated my father's murder.
I was seventeen. He begged for mercy, claimed family blood should count for something. I showed him exactly what family blood meant to a dead man's son.
"We find the traitor," I continue, my voice carrying the promise of violence. "We make an example. And we ensure this never happens again."
"What about the woman?" Enzo asks, and there's something careful in his tone that makes me look at him more closely. "How much does she know about our security protocols?"
"Nothing actionable," I reply. "She's been unconscious or under guard since we took her. But I want her kept close. No unnecessary exposure to operational details."
Before anyone can respond, the door opens without a knock. Only one person in this house would dare interrupt a strategic meeting without permission.
My sister.
Isabella steps into the room wearing a summer dress and the kind of determined expression that has gotten her into troublesince she was old enough to walk. Her dark hair falls around her shoulders like a curtain, and her hazel eyes—our mother’s eyes—blaze with righteous fury.
"Isabella." Luca’s voice carries both affection and warning. "This isn’t the place?—"
"I know exactly where I am," she snaps, her gaze fixed on me. "I also know what you’ve done, Matteo. How could you?"
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. My men exchange glances, sensing the danger in a Romano family dispute playing out before them. Isabella never cared about appearances when her principles were at stake.
I set down the papers I was holding, finally giving her my full attention. "This is a business meeting. Not the place for sentiment."
"You kidnapped a woman," my sister insists, stepping forward despite my warning. "After what happened to me… how could you do that?"
Her words slice through the air. Enzo’s jaw tightens, his eyes going dark at the reminder of what we’d endured to get her back. If it wasn’t for him, she would not be here right now and this is one of the reasons why he’s one of my closest people and my underboss. I will be forever grateful and in debt to him for saving my little sister.
"Isabella," I say evenly, calm but edged with steel. "Your feelings are not irrelevant, but they do not dictate Romano business. Please, leave now—we’ll talk privately later."
