(Alessio's POV)
The dungeon smelled of wet stone. Bianca lay strapped to a steel table beneath a single bare bulb. I filled a syringe with saline where she could see it and pushed the needle into her IV line exactly as she had done to Eleanor.
She flinched.
"Did Eleanor look like that?" I asked. "Did you watch her while the poison spread? Did she ask you to stop?"
Bianca sobbed and promised to tell me everything. She insisted the syringe had been someone else's idea, then changed her answer when I asked for a name. I kept waiting for her fear to make me feel better. It did not.
Marco called every hour. Shipping partners had pulled out, supply chains were failing, and the western defense network remained open. Each report confirmed how much of the Moretti empire had rested on work I ne
