69novels Chapter 234 - 44
Chapter 234 - 44
The city had always whispered about the Romanos.
About their rise.
About their fall.
About the son who rebuilt the empire brick by brick with cleaner hands than those who came before him.
But no one talked enough about the people who waited patiently in the shadows.
The ones who didn’t mourn the fall of the old families —
they resented the boy who’d taken everything from them.
And tonight, one of those shadows finally stepped into the light.
The warehouse had fallen into silence hours ago.
Jace’s men were gone, bodies removed, loose ends tied in blood and fire.
The only sound left was the faint creak of rusted beams and the distant echo of dripping water.
Then footsteps.
Slow.
Unhurried.
A tall figure emerged from behind a rusted metal column, illuminated only by the faint glow of moonlight filtering through broken windows.
Alejandro.
Donna Carmela’s lover.
The man who’d been lounging in silk sheets and sipping aged wine while pretending to adore the queen of the Romano empire.
He stood in the center of the empty warehouse now, gloved hands folded behind his back, surveying the aftermath with a look that wasn’t shock...
...but irritation.
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue once, stepping over a streak of dried blood. "Sloppy work. He’s losing his touch."
He crouched near a broken crate, fingers brushing the dust where one of Jace’s bullets had ricocheted.
"Almost got me tonight," he murmured to himself, amusement stretching across his features. "Almost."
The word carried a certain thrill — the thrill of a man who had been ignored for far too long, finally tasting the first hint of danger aimed in his direction.
His phone vibrated.
He didn’t startle.
He didn’t rush.
He simply rose, checked the caller ID, and smiled.
Isabella Moretti.
Ah. The journalist.
The ambitious heiress ho wanted to build her name by tearing down an empire she didn’t understand.
He slid his thumb across the screen.
"Finally," Isabella snapped the moment the line connected. "Do you realize what you almost got me into? Your little stunt tonight nearly—"
Alejandro cut her off with a soft hum.
Everything about him — from the way he spoke to the way he walked — carried the quiet arrogance of a man who had never feared a consequence in his life.
"Isabella," he murmured, "I told you to wait."
"I am waiting," she hissed. "But Jace is becoming suspicious. His entire world is falling apart, and instead of letting the documentary run its course, you keep adding complications! He’s going to trace this back to someone."
"Someone?" He repeated, amused. "Not me."
Her breath hitched.
Just slightly.
As if she knew — or was beginning to know — that whatever she believed she controlled... she didn’t.
"Alejandro." Her voice trembled. "You promised protection. I’m risking everything—my career, my reputation—because you said—"
"I said," he drawled, "that if you do what I want, you’ll have the biggest story of your life. You’ll have the Romanos kneeling. You’ll have the world hanging on every word you say."
He walked deeper into the warehouse, hand brushing lightly over a bullet-ridden wall.
"But protection, Isabella?" he added with a small chuckle. "That depends on how useful you remain."
There was silence.
A cold, perfect silence.
He continued, "Your teaser went live. The stocks dropped. The public has taken the bait. Everything is going according to plan."
"It’s going too fast," she whispered. "And Mira—she wasn’t supposed to be hurt. That wasn’t part of the agreement."
His jaw tightened.
Barely.
"Mira was collateral," he said plainly. "A necessary push."
"You didn’t say it would go that far," Isabella shot back. "I didn’t sign up to take a pregnant woman down—"
"You signed up," Alejandro said, voice flattening to something thinner, colder, "to destroy the man who destroyed everything before him. You signed up to reveal the truth. The blood. The crimes. The secrets."
He paused before continuing again with a deadly tone.
"And you signed up because you liked the idea of being the one woman in the world who could bring Jace Romano to his knees."
Her silence said everything.
Alejandro smirked.
"You see?" he whispered. "We all want something."
He ended the call before she could respond.
Then he leaned against a steel beam, crossing one ankle over the other.
The pose was casual.
But the storm in his eyes was anything but.
Because this — all of this — had been building for years.
~~
He remembered the night the old families fell.
The night Jace wiped them out.
Alejandro had watched from the sidelines, a charming young man with a drink in his hand and a bitter laugh caught in his throat.
He wasn’t blood.
He wasn’t a direct Romano heir.
But he had been close enough to witness the world collapse.
Close enough to feel his future shatter into dust.
The uncle he admired had died that night.
Jace’s bullet.
Jace’s orders.
Jace’s empire rising on the bones of the old one.
Alejandro didn’t cry.
He didn’t mourn.
He waited.
The perfect weapon doesn’t strike immediately.
It sharpens.
Polishes.
Sleeps in plain sight.
He rose through the shadows.
Became indispensable to Donna Carmela.
Slipped into her life, her home, her bed — not out of love, but out of strategy.
Donna saw affection.
Alejandro saw access.
Access to the Romano fortune.
Access to family secrets.
Access to influence.
And access to Jace’s weakest point:
Mira.
The moment she came into the picture, everything became easier.
Jace softened.
Lost some of his edge.
Loved fiercely — too fiercely.
It made Alejandro laugh, watching him choose flowers over fear, sweetness over strategy.
"Love makes even the sharpest men blind," he whispered to himself in the empty warehouse.
And then Mira got pregnant.
The cherry on top.
A child.
An heir.
Another reason for Jace to falter.
Alejandro had been behind the leaks.
Behind the rumors.
Behind the attacks.
Behind every journalist who dared to whisper about the Romanos.
He orchestrated the chaos with the elegance of a conductor leading an orchestra.
And now?
Now Mira lay unconscious in a hospital bed, fighting for her life.
Jace would break.
Completely.
Which meant the empire would break too.
"Almost over," Alejandro whispered, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve.
Almost.
His phone buzzed again.
This time, a message.
A single line from an unknown number he knew by heart — one of the men he’d bought loyal.
Jace is moving again. He’s coming back to the warehouse district. He’s searching everything.
Alejandro’s smile widened, slow and satisfied.
"Let him," he murmured.
Let him tear down the city.
Let him burn every street.
Let him drown in his rage.
Because the more noise Jace made, the easier it became for Alejandro to finish what he’d been planning for years.
He stepped out of the warehouse, pulling on his coat.
Outside, the city lights flickered.
Police sirens wailed in the distance.
Chaos spread from the Romano empire like wildfire.
And he walked through it all like a man strolling through a garden.
He wasn’t afraid.
He wasn’t threatened.
He wasn’t even rushed.
Because villains who hide in plain sight never hurry.
They simply wait for the final piece to fall into place.
And Alejandro knew something Jace didn’t yet realize:
The final piece wasn’t the documentary.
Wasn’t the stock crash.
Wasn’t the attacks.
Wasn’t the chaos.
It was the moment Jace would walk into the truth,
the truth that the one person he’d tolerated in Donna Carmela’s life...
the one man he never suspected...
the one man he dismissed as harmless...
was the serpent he should have killed long ago.
Alejandro stepped into the darkness, coat sweeping behind him,
and whispered the words he’d been saving for years:
"Time to end the Romano reign."