Chapter 8 - The Desperate Strike
The humiliation at the gala broke whatever sanity remained in the Moretti penthouse.
For forty-eight hours, Dante shut himself in his office at the Bellissimo, refusing to see Lily, Eleanor, or his capos. He had pulled up every record, every news article on Julian Vance and Claire Bennett Vance.
He saw the photographs of them on yachts in Monaco, walking through private estates in the Cotswolds, holding their infant son at a polo match. Claire was smiling in every single photograph. A genuine, radiant, deep-soul smile that she had never once worn during her three years in Las Vegas.
He had suffocated her. He had taken her love for granted, thinking she was a harmless bird in a gilded cage.
Now, she was an eagle soaring at an altitude where his bullets couldn't even reach.
Meanwhile, Lily was spiraling into madness.
"He's going to throw us out, Mom!" Lily shrieked inside Eleanor's suburban house, pacing the floor while Isabella slept in a playpen. "Did you see his face? He looked at Claire like she was an angel, and he looked at me like I was garbage! If he cuts me off, I have nothing! No money, no child support agreement—nothing!"
Eleanor chewed on her thumb, her face haggard. "Dante wouldn't abandon his own daughter..."
"He doesn't give a damn about Isabella!" Lily screamed. "He only sees Isabella as the proof of his mistake! Every time he looks at her, he remembers why Claire left him!"
A dark, venomous idea began to take root in Lily’s panicked mind.
"The rival cartel," Lily whispered, her eyes wide, erratic. "The Petrov syndicate. They’ve been trying to get leverage on Dante for two years. They want Dante's supply lines, and they hate the Vances because Julian Vance refused to launder their money through his shipping ports."
"Lily, what are you talking about?" Eleanor gasped, horrified. "Stay out of the mob business!"
"If Dante goes down, the court will award me the estate for Isabella!" Lily babbled, pulling out her phone. "And if Claire... if Claire's perfect little life gets shattered, she'll see what it feels like to lose everything! Just like she made me feel at that gala!"
Lily made the call.
She reached out to Andrei Petrov’s second-in-command, offering inside security codes to the Bellissimo and the private schedule of Claire’s movements around the north Strip construction site.
She thought she was playing chess.
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She didn't know that Julian Vance’s intelligence network had tapped every communication channel connected to the Moretti family the moment their Gulfstream touched down in Nevada.
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