The discovery of the initial 'E' disrupted the focus of the war room. It spread like poison, creeping under the office door and tainting the entire penthouse. A line had been drawn. On one side were Dante, Aria, and me. On the other, unknowingly, was Elara.
Dante was a master of control, but this was a wound too deep, a suspicion too big to mask entirely. He became a silent observer in his own home. I would catch him watching Elara as she served dinner. His gaze was not hostile, but intensely analytical, as if trying to see beyond her kind, crinkled smile to the secrets she might hold.
He started conversations with her that seemed casual but were full of traps. "Elara, do you remember the security firm my father used back then? The one with the red logo?" he'd ask, sipping his morning coffee. "I was trying to recall the name."
"Oh, Lord, child, that was a lifetime ago," she would respond with a gentle laugh, her hands busy kneading dough. "My memory isn't what it used to be. Why the sudden interest in such old things?"
Her answers were always innocent, her demeanor unchanged. But under the weight of Dante's suspicion, her every word and gesture seemed to carry a possible double meaning. Her nervousness grew in response to his intense scrutiny, creating a vicious cycle of paranoia. The easy warmth that had once filled the kitchen was replaced by a tense chill.
Aria felt it too. "What's wrong with Dante?" she asked me one evening, her brow furrowed with worry. "He's been so… strange with Elara. She asked me if she'd done something to offend him. She was nearly in tears."
I couldn't tell her everything, but I couldn't lie either. "We found something in the Valerius files," I said carefully. "A possible link to what happened to your parents. It's… complicated."
Late one night, I found Dante in the main security hub, a room next to his office filled with monitors showing every angle of the estate. He was focused on a single screen: a live feed from the kitchen. Elara was on her personal phone, her back to the camera. She spoke in low, hushed tones, her posture tense. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as if afraid of being overheard.
"What are you doing?" I whispered, walking up behind him.
"She gets a call, same time, every other night," he said, his voice a low, grim monotone. "Never lasts more than two minutes. The number is blocked."
He was torturing himself. He was tearing apart his own past, his own home, searching for a betrayal he desperately didn't want to find. The foundation of his world—the fortress he had built on the ashes of his family—was cracking from within.
"You can't do this, Dante," I pleaded softly. "You can't accuse her based on a single letter and a few nervous phone calls. She loves you. She raised you."
He finally turned from the screen to look at me, and his eyes were filled with an agony that crushed my heart.
"In my world, Isabella," he said, his voice heavy with the weight of his life, "love is the perfect disguise for betrayal. It's the last place you ever think to look."
On the monitor, Elara ended her call, quickly hiding her phone as she heard someone approaching. She turned, forcing a smile for the guard who entered. But Dante and I had both seen it. The fleeting look of pure fear on her face before she put on a mask. My heart sank, because in that moment, I feared that his terrible, cynical view of love might just be right.