The silver clasp of Isabella Romano’s evening bag clicked open with a sound that seemed to echo across the quiet olive grove.

Seventy pairs of high-society eyes, fueled by champagne and panic, shifted from the armed perimeter guards to the center of the terrace where Marco Bellini stood holding the object. It was a thumb-sized black flash drive, casing scorched with a serial number that matched the internal motherboard of the bomb recovered from beneath Alessandro’s chair.

Isabella took a sharp, jagged breath. The ivory silk of her engagement gown seemed to suffocate her as she stared down at the small piece of plastic resting on the guard's gloved palm.

“That’s not mine,” she whispered. Her voice was thin, almost lost beneath the cicadas humming in the dark. She stepped forward, her mother’s silver pendant swinging wildly against her collarbone. “Alessandro, you know me. You know my family. Why would I—how could anyone think—”

“Step back, Miss Romano,” Marco commanded, his hand resting heavily on the grip of his holster. His eyes weren’t angry; they were dead and professional, hardened by years of surviving the brutal machinations of the Moretti syndicate.

Alessandro Moretti did not move. He stood ten paces away, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his tailored charcoal trousers. The amber string lights overhead cast harsh shadows across the sharp angles of his face. His dark eyes were locked onto Isabella, searching—not for guilt, but for the flaw in the picture.

He knew every ledger in his empire. He knew every enemy who wanted him dead. And he knew that Isabella Romano, daughter of a declining shipping magnate, didn't have the stomach, let alone the technical know-how, to wire a remote-detonation C-4 variant beneath a custom mahogany dining chair.

Yet, there it was. Found in her personal bag, tucked right beside her compact mirror and lipstick.

“Search her dressing room,” Alessandro said quietly. His voice carried across the silent garden, cutting through the murmurs of the terrified guests like a sheet of ice.

“Alessandro!” Don Vittorio Romano, Isabella’s father, stepped out of the crowd, his face purple with outrage. He was a proud man, a man whose family had once ruled the southern ports before the Morettis absorbed them into their sphere of influence. “This is an outrage! My daughter is your fiancée! You cannot subject her to—to common criminal treatment over a planted piece of junk!”

“Shut up, Vittorio,” Alessandro said without raising his voice. It was the tone that had made rival capos throw down their weapons and beg for exile. Vittorio snapped his mouth shut, retreating half a step under the crushing weight of Alessandro’s gaze.

“Marco,” Alessandro continued, not breaking eye contact with Isabella. “Turn the room inside out. Check every seam of her dress, her phone, her car. If she’s a traitor, I want to know whose payroll she’s on. And if she’s innocent…”

He paused, his jaw tightening.

“...I want to know who is trying to frame my future wife.”

Isabella trembled, tears spilling over her lashes as she looked at the man she had agreed to marry six months ago. She had thought she knew him—a dangerous man, yes, but one whose word was iron. Now, standing under the cold glare of his suspicion, she realized how fragile her sanctuary truly was.

“I didn't put it there,” she choked out, her hands curling into tight fists at her sides. “I swear to you, Alessandro. I didn't even open that bag after dinner started.”

“Nobody opens their own bag when someone else is slipping a death warrant inside it,” a quiet voice piped up from near the edge of the terrace.

Everyone turned.

Small, clutching her worn stuffed lamb, four-year-old Emma stood beside her mother, Marta, the head housekeeper. Marta looked terrified, her knuckles white as she tried to pull her daughter back into the shadows of the stone pillar.

“What did you say, little one?” Alessandro asked, his tough exterior softening by a fraction as he looked down at the child who had saved his life less than an hour ago.

Emma pointed a small, trembling finger straight past Isabella, toward the VIP seating area where the inner circle of the Moretti syndicate had been dining.

“The shiny man dropped it,” Emma whispered loudly. “When the big lights went flash-flash. He put his hand in the pretty lady's bag while she was looking at the birds.”

Alessandro’s head snapped toward the table.

“What shiny man?”