Part 2: Anna looked up at him, shaking.

“Please don’t push me down again.”

The sentence broke something in the room.

Not because it was dramatic.

Because it was too small.

Too honest.

Too humiliating.

Marcus bent to help her. “Anna, come on. I’ve got you.”

And then a chair scraped.

The sound was quiet, but every head turned.

At the back of the restaurant sat Table 23.

Nobody at La Bernardine Palace approached Table 23 unless called. It was always reserved. Always half-shadowed. Always watched by men in dark suits who ate little and saw everything.

Alessandro Moretti stood.

He was not a giant. Maybe five-ten. Lean, controlled, with black hair touched by silver at the temples and eyes so dark they seemed almost gentle until they landed on you.

Then you remembered every rumor you had ever heard.

The Moretti family. The docks. The unions. The judges who retired early. The men who disappeared from conversations and never returned to them.

Alessandro crossed the dining room slowly.

No one stopped him.

Even Ethan did not speak when Alessandro came close.

He was still smirking when Alessandro’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar.

One second Ethan Caldwell was standing over a waitress.

The next he was lifted onto his toes like a misbehaving child.

Gasps rippled through the restaurant.

Ethan’s face went white.

Alessandro pulled him close enough that only a few inches separated their faces.

“You made a mistake,” Alessandro said.

He did not raise his voice.

He did not need to.

Ethan’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Alessandro’s fist tightened in the fabric of the five-thousand-dollar jacket.

“You are going to apologize to her.”

Ethan’s eyes flicked toward his bodyguards, but they had frozen near the bar. The impossible had happened too quickly. Nobody touched a Caldwell. Nobody challenged Moretti. Yet here they were, trapped between two laws of New York power, and only one seemed real.

“I—” Ethan choked.

Alessandro leaned closer. “Now.”

Ethan swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

Anna was still on the floor, too shaken to answer.

Alessandro’s eyes did not leave Ethan. “Again.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said, louder this time.

“For what?”

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