Part 2: Her bottom lip trembled. “Because they call me murder girl.”

The room went silent.

Outside, rain slapped against the tall windows.

Alessandro’s hands curled into fists. “Who?”

“Kids at school,” Sophia whispered. “They say you kill people. They say I’m going to grow up and kill people too. They say Mommy died because God punishes bad families.”

Something dark rose inside him.

The kind of darkness men begged not to see.

“Names,” he said.

“Mr. Romano,” Isabella warned gently.

He turned on her. “Names.”

Sophia shrank into the chair. “You can’t shoot children, Papa.”

He almost smiled, and that almost broke him.

“No,” he said quietly. “But their parents—”

“Alessandro.”

The maid’s voice cracked through the room like a slap.

Nobody called him Alessandro in that tone. Nobody.

His head turned slowly. “Excuse me?”

Isabella stood straighter. She was twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine, with dark hair pulled back at the nape of her neck and eyes that looked far too tired for someone so young. She had worked in his house for two years. In all that time, he had barely noticed her unless Sophia needed something or dinner was late.

Now she looked him dead in the face.

“Threatening people will not fix your daughter,” she said. “She needs support, not revenge.”

“You work for me.”

“I work in your home,” Isabella said. “Right now, your daughter needs you to be a father, not a boss.”

The silence was dangerous.

Any soldier in his organization would have dropped his eyes. Any man on the street would have apologized. But Isabella did neither.

And Sophia watched her with absolute trust.

Alessandro looked back at his daughter. “How long?”
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