Chapter 97 The Broken Pact

• The Salvatore mansion had never been a silent place. Even in the depths of night, its walls seemed to breathe, heavy with the perpetual echo of every decision that had been born there—alliances sealed in hushed voices, executions ordered without witnesses, oaths spoken in blood, betrayals that still seeped into the stone—as if the house itself refused to forget. Yet that dawn, the silence was different, absolute, oppressive, offering no refuge at all, only the unsettling sensation of waiting for something inevitable.
• Dante was shut away in a meeting with the local bosses, trying to contain the chaos unleashed by the emissary’s death, negotiating consequences that had not yet taken definitive shape. Verona, meanwhile, tirelessly reviewed the property’s digital access points, reinforcing systems and sealing invisible doors that could fail at any moment. I had been sitting on the edge of the bed for more than an hour, motionless, my pulse lodged in my throat, aware of every heartbeat as if it were marking a countdown only I could hear.
• Ethan’s message was still burning on the portable monitor, illuminating the room with a cold, impersonal light. It was a single text, sent barely three minutes earlier, enough to destabilize everything Dante was trying to hold together.