The next morning, Alessandro found them in the kitchen.

Eva sat at the table, Sophia balanced on her lap, a sippy cup clutched like a trophy. Eva’s voice was low and smooth, a cadence Alessandro recognized only after a beat — Russian.

“Zay-ka,” Eva murmured, touching Sophia’s nose. The baby squealed in delight, giggling, tiny fists flailing.

Alessandro leaned against the doorway, torn between smiling and grinding his teeth. “Italian would suit her better.”

Eva didn’t look up. “She’ll learn both.” She kissed Sophia’s hair, the gesture quick, almost unconscious. “But Russian first. It’s sharper.”

From behind him, silk rustled. Marcella’s voice slid into the room like a blade.

“Or perhaps she wants her to be raised Bratva,” Marcella said smoothly. “Be careful, Alessandro. She’ll turn your daughter into a soldier, not a lady.”

Sophia giggled again, oblivious, slapping her little hands against Eva’s blazer.

Alessandro’s jaw tightened. He didn’t take the bait. “Mother,” he said without turning, “don’t speak to Eva about this again.” His tone was clipped, but inside his chest, anger burned like dry ice.

Marcella’s answering laugh was low and elegant. “Oh, caro. I don’t need to. She’s already doing it.”

Eva glanced up then, her expression unreadable, eyes like frozen glass. The moment stretched tight as a wire.

Alessandro broke it first, pulling his coat on. “I have work.”

________________________________________

The Law Firm

Castellano & Associates looked like any Manhattan law powerhouse — marble lobby, buzzing phones, polished assistants in black heels. What the public didn’t know: it was the Bianchi family’s cleanest cover, a laundering machine disguised as a cathedral to justice.

Alessandro’s stride was brisk, efficient. He needed paperwork, focus, and distance from the morning’s battlefield.

But the moment he stepped into his office, his secretary looked up with wide eyes. “She’s here.”

Before he could ask who, the door opened.

Senator Lilian Grayson — once Judge Grayson, the woman who had bent courts and children alike under her gavel — stepped inside like she owned the place. She was immaculate in navy silk, hair smoothed into a helmet of control.

And in her hands? A gift bag. Pastel blue. Ribbon-tied.

She set it on his desk like a bomb. Bottles rattled inside. A pacifier rolled to the edge and stopped, balanced like a dare.

“Congratulations,” she purred, that smirk carved into her face. “On fatherhood, guardianship, whatever you’re calling it these days. Thought I’d bring something useful.”

Alessandro’s stomach turned to stone. “You don’t belong here.”

“On the contrary,” she said, circling his desk with the slow grace of a shark. “This is exactly where I belong. I make laws now, Alessandro. And laws decide who keeps a child… and who doesn’t.”

Alessandro didn’t blink. He leaned back in his chair, voice low, steady, the kind of calm that made people sweat.

“I also know you’re no saint, Senator. Funny thing about power—people leave fingerprints all over it. Yours are everywhere.”

Grayson’s smirk flickered. Just a fraction.

He tilted his head, studying her like she was already a corpse he hadn’t buried yet.

Her hand brushed the pacifier, setting it spinning. Her smile sharpened.

“Enjoy the toys. Next time, I’ll bring papers.”

Alessandro didn’t blink. He leaned back in his chair, voice low and steady, the kind of calm that made people sweat.

“I also know you’re no saint, Senator. Funny thing about power—people leave fingerprints all over it. Yours are everywhere.”

Grayson’s smirk didn’t fade. If anything, it deepened. She tapped a manicured nail against the glass desk.

“Speaking of fingerprints… your Eva leaves plenty of her own. Did you ever tell her I’ve seen the records? Seoul, 1990s. Father died in an alley no one cared about. Mother gone hours after childbirth. Half-Korean, half-Russian, raised under Viktor’s leash like some wild animal tamed for court.”

Alessandro’s jaw locked.

“She hides it well,” Grayson went on, eyes gleaming. “But you should ask yourself if she’s as spotless as you want her to be. Women like her?” The senator leaned closer, her perfume cloying. “They don’t erase their bloodlines. They repeat them.”

That was too far. Alessandro’s voice cut through the room, steel wrapped in fire.

“Don’t talk about her like you know her. Eva isn’t sketchy. She isn’t broken. She’s real. She’s clawed her way through more than you could stomach in one lifetime, and the fact that she still stands? That’s not a weakness. That’s strength.”

For the first time, the senator’s smirk faltered — not much, but enough.

Grayson recovered quickly, voice dripping with disdain. “Romantic. Almost convincing. But a shame, really… she could have been me. She had the brain, the drive.

She could have climbed into marble halls and written history. Instead, she chose to waste herself in shadows, defending people with no money and no influence. Rats instead of kings.”

She plucked the pacifier off his desk, holding it between two fingers as if it were dirty. “That’s why I won’t let her guard Sophia. Or you, for that matter. You both think grit replaces pedigree. It doesn’t. The child deserves power, not pity.”

She dropped the pacifier back onto the desk with a soft clink, then smiled that perfect, poisonous smile. “Enjoy your day, Counselor Bianchi.”

And just like that, she was gone, heels clicking down the corridor, leaving the scent of corruption and baby powder in her wake.

Grayson’s perfume still lingered after the door shut, but Alessandro was already dialing.

“Follow her,” he said the moment the line picked up. His voice was quiet, dangerous. “Report everything. Every stop. Every call. Don’t get caught.”

A pause. Then: “Capito.”

He ended the call and leaned back in his chair, exhaling once through his teeth. The senator’s words clung to him like smoke — Eva’s past, her bloodline, her worth. She’d meant them as poison. Instead, they only hardened something in him.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Beneath the files and pens, untouched for years, lay the watch. Slim, steel-banded, simple. Not his style—he never wore it. But it had been a gift.

Eva’s.

She’d pressed it into his hand one night when she still believed him. When she’d looked at him like he was more than a weapon.

He turned it over in his palm, thumb brushing the engraving she’d pretended wasn’t sentimental. His throat felt tight. He’d kept it. Always.

The phone on his desk buzzed again, silent and unanswered. Her silence was deliberate, a punishment.

“Enough,” he muttered. He strapped the watch on, the cold steel biting his wrist like a shackle.

Grayson thought Eva was weak. Marcella thought she was a threat. Maybe they were both right.

But Alessandro Bianchi knew one thing: he wasn’t letting her slip away again.

Not this time.