A daughter forged in betrayal

Iris

The echo of Nicholas’s touch still clung to my skin. His voice haunted the base of my spine.

You’re a fucking addiction. You’re mine to burn for

And God, how we burned.

But I left without a word.

Because if I’d stayed, I would’ve let that fire swallow me whole.

And tonight wasn’t about longing.

It was about reckoning.

The drive bled into the dark, headlights slicing through the Sicilian night like a warning. I didn’t check if I was being followed. Nicholas would’ve stopped me if he’d truly wanted to. Or worse…he would’ve come with me.

But this?

This had to be mine.

The gates of the Rossi estate opened without resistance. Recognition or shame, I didn’t care. The sensors knew my face, the same one my father had sold like a forged signature.

The halls were just as I remembered: expensive, cold, curated within an inch of soulless. Wealth polished the marble, but it couldn’t bleach the blood from the foundation.

I walked like a ghost who’d come back to collect. My heels cracked against the floor like a countdown.

The scent hit me before the door opened. That same cologne…power and pride bottled into something synthetic. Matteo Rossi didn’t believe in humility. He believed in legacy.

But legacies rot when they're built on betrayal.

 I didn’t knock. That courtesy died the night he sold me.

The door gave way under my hand.

And there he was.

Matteo Fucking Rossi.

Still dressed like influence incarnate. Still sitting behind a desk like a throne carved from the silence of others.

He looked up, and there wasn’t a flicker of shame in him. Just that same cool mask he wore at council meetings and funerals.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he said, smooth as ever. “You always did love dramatic timing.”

I stepped into the room, slow and deliberate.

“Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t a reunion.”

He stood, straightening the cuffs of his shirt like I wasn’t the devil walking toward him.

“Still sharp,” he mused. “Though I suppose Nicholas always liked that about you.”

“Don’t say his name.”

The words sliced through the air, quiet and fatal.

He paused…only slightly. Enough for me to see the crack. Then smiled.

“Touched a nerve, have I?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

I closed the distance between us, each step deliberate, steady. The room shrank around us. Time sat still.

“You’ve come all this way,” he said. “What is it you want, Iris?”

I stopped inches from his desk. Let the silence sit. Let it ferment.

“To look into the eyes of the man who sold me,” I said. “And to let you know…. when your empire falls, I’ll be the one handing you the ashes.”

His gaze flickered, but his posture didn’t break. Of course it didn’t. He’d spent his life playing God with other people’s futures.

“I did what was necessary,” he said. “You think this world runs on morality?”

“No,” I replied. “It runs on power. And you gave yours away the moment you gave me up.”

He opened his mouth. I cut him off

“Nicholas told me everything,” I said. “The bribes. The rigged elections. The kill order you signed like it was another dinner bill.”

The words didn’t tremble. Neither did I.

For the first time, I saw it…the age behind his eyes. The wear beneath the polish. Not regret. Just erosion. A man who used to win rooms by walking into them.

“You came for closure?” he asked, almost amused. “Vengeance? Forgiveness?”

“I came,” I said, “to show you I’m not afraid of ghosts anymore.”

He tried to speak again, but I was already turning away.

I didn’t need to yell.

He wasn’t worth the volume.

“You didn’t break me, Father,” I said over my shoulder, voice like the soft pull of a trigger. “You built the weapon that’s going to end you.”

And I walked out.

Not with rage. Not with grief.

But with the kind of silence that only survivors carry.

I didn’t glance back at the man who gave me life and then sold it. There was nothing left for me here, not even hate. Only purpose. Cold, Focused, Forged in his betrayal.

As I stepped outside, I reached for my phone.

Marco. He’d know where Paolo was being held. I’d give him the order to bring that bastard in. No blood…Not yet. I needed answers. And Marco always delivered.

He was the one I trusted to handle quiet things. The clean things.

The ones that mattered.

“Bring him to the basement,” I said when he picked up. “It’s time Paolo started talking.”

He didn’t ask questions.

He never did.

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The door shut behind her with the finality of judgment.

Matteo Rossi didn’t move.

He stood at his desk, one hand braced against polished oak, the other still holding the weight of the moment she’d walked away from him.

No shouting. No theatrics. Just silence—clean, lethal, and hers.

The kind of silence he used to wield like a weapon.

He looked down at the desk. At the glass of untouched scotch. At the framed photo…years old, of a girl with chestnut hair and a storm behind her eyes.

His daughter.

No. Not anymore.

Now she was something else. Something sharpened. Something remade by fire and given a name that no longer belonged to him.

“You built the weapon that’s going to end you.”

He sat slowly. Felt the ache in his knees. The weight in his spine.

She was right, he had built her, not with kindness. With necessity. With precision.

And now she was a blade pointed at his throat.

He’d called it sacrifice, bargain, strategy. The truth was uglier.

The truth was, he was afraid.

Not of death. That was easy.

No…he was afraid of irrelevance. Of being remembered not as a kingmaker, but as a coward who sold his bloodline to buy himself one more year at the table.

He reached for the glass. Didn’t drink. Just held it.

Outside, the estate was quiet.

But inside?

Everything was shifting.

Iris had fire in her lungs and power in her hands now. Bianchi’s hands. Bianchi’s war machine, and she wasn’t coming back to the fold.

She was coming for the bones.

Matteo leaned back in his chair, eyes on the door she’d left through.

And for the first time in decades, he wasn’t sure if he’d survive what he created.

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