(Alessandro pov )
The name felt like a betrayal. “It’s Moretti’s wife. It’s been her all along.”
The silence that followed was heavier and more profound than the vast, empty landscape that surrounded us. The name hung in the air, an impossible truth that shattered our understanding of the world. Liliana Moretti. The Serpent’s wife. The Hidden Queen. The ghost who had been orchestrating this war was not just some unknown enemy; she was the wife of the most powerful man on the Commission, a man who had just given me his blessing to destroy her pawns.
My mind, which had been racing to connect the dots, now felt frozen by the sheer scale of the deception. For twenty-five years, she had hidden in plain sight, a ghost wearing the protection of the most respected name in our world. For twenty
