Chapter 7
568words
As the Consigliere, Matteo controlled every information network the family owned. He didn't need a warrant. He simply gave the word, and his soldiers pinned Isabella down, forcibly seizing her phone and laptop.
Isabella screamed, clawing to get her devices back, but Dante grabbed her wrists and slammed her face-down onto the sofa.
"Let me go! I’m your sister! You’re doing this to me for a dead girl?"
Nobody listened to her cries. Even though Isabella had deleted her call logs and formatted her phone, her attempts at a cover-up were pathetic in front of the family’s top-tier hackers.
Ten minutes later, Matteo’s hands stopped moving over the keys.
"Here’s your proof."
Matteo’s voice was flat, as cold as a corpse in a freezer.
Matteo had cracked a private cloud backup Isabella kept on an offshore server. Inside was a folder labeled "Trash."
His finger hovered over the trackpad for a long time before he finally, tremblingly, clicked it open.
It was a "product verification" video sent from the kidnappers to their employer.
As the video began to play on the giant screen in the hall, the suffocating living room instantly turned into a living hell.
The footage was shaky, showing the filthy concrete floor of that abandoned slaughterhouse.
I was lying there, my face covered in blood, my limbs twisted at unnatural, sickening angles.
In the video, a man grabbed my hair and forced my face toward the camera.
"Is this level of torture satisfactory? We can turn up the heat if you want."
The recipient ID displayed on the screen was clear as day: it was Isabella’s burner phone.
Below the video, there was a single reply: “Make it hurt more. I don't want her dying too fast.”
"Oh god—"
My mother, who had come downstairs to see what was happening, couldn't take it. She clutched her chest and collapsed. My father fainted right beside her. The old butler scrambled to call for the family doctor.
But no one cared about them.
Luca fell to his knees, letting out a low, guttural growl like a wounded beast.
Lorenzo stared at the screen, his eyes fixed on the version of me that was covered in blood, desperately screaming his name.
Every time I cried out "Lorenzo," it felt like a dull blade sawing through his heart.
He finally understood. The "three men" at the docks, the "I’m scared"—it was all a setup to get him to leave me, to leave me vulnerable, to make sure I died.
He slowly turned his head.
In the corner, Isabella was curled into a ball, her face as white as a sheet.
Lorenzo looked at her. The adoration and tenderness that used to fill his eyes were gone, replaced by a hatred so pure it looked like he wanted to skin her alive.
"You hired them? Why?"
Isabella trembled, reaching out to grab the hem of Lorenzo’s pants, trying to beg for mercy.
Lorenzo kicked her hand away with enough force to send her crashing into the coffee table.
The mask of the "innocent victim" shattered. She stopped crying. Instead, the corners of her mouth twitched into a localized, eerie grin.
Then, a sharp, piercing burst of hysterical laughter erupted from her throat.
"Hah... hahahahahaha!"
The laughter echoed through the hollow mansion, sending chills down everyone's spine.
