Chapter 4

Grant glanced at the shattered frame on the floor.

His brows tightened for a moment, then relaxed.

"It's just a photograph, Adriana."

His dismissive tone made something inside me go cold.

"The frame broke. So what? Is that really worth losing your temper over?"

Then his expression hardened.

"I think you've completely lost perspective because of that ten million."

Beside him, Regina sniffled at exactly the right moment.

"Don Jefferson, please don't blame Adriana."

Her eyes were wet as she lowered her head.

"Maybe it really was my fault. I must have done something to upset her."

Grant's anger immediately sharpened.

"Enough."

He turned to me.

"I gave you a chance, Adriana. You chose not to take it. Pack your things and get out of Moretti headquarters. Now."

I said nothing.

I crouched down, carefully picked my mother's photograph out of the broken glass, and slipped it into my bag.

Then I packed the last of my belongings.

My silence seemed to unsettle both of them.

Maybe they had expected me to argue.

Maybe Grant thought I would beg him to reconsider after nine years with the Family.

I did neither.

I closed my bag and walked toward the door.

When I reached Grant, I stopped.

"Don Jefferson."

He looked at me.

"Remember what you said today."

My voice remained calm.

"I hope you don't regret it."

My gaze shifted briefly to Regina.

"And I hope she's really as capable as she wants everyone to believe."

Grant frowned.

But before he could answer, I walked past him.

I didn't look back.

There was nothing left inside those walls worth staying for.

...

When I returned home, my mother was resting on the sofa.

She had only recently been discharged from the hospital, and there was still a trace of weakness in her face.

The moment she saw me home so early, she knew something was wrong.

"Adriana? What happened?"

I didn't hide anything from her.

I told her about the ten million, Regina, Grant, and finally, my decision to leave the Moretti Family's port operation.

My mother listened quietly.

When I finished, she reached over and took my hand.

"You did the right thing."

There was no blame in her voice.

"If nine years of loyalty can be forgotten that easily, then they don't deserve another year of your life."

She patted my hand gently.

"I still have some savings. Don't rush into anything. Stay home for a while. You've spent enough years taking care of everyone else's problems."

Her words loosened something that had been tight inside my chest for far too long.

...

The days that followed were strangely slow.

In the mornings, I went with my mother to the neighborhood market. She would argue cheerfully over the price of tomatoes and insist she could tell fresh fish from bad with a single glance.

In the afternoons, we walked through the park. Sometimes she joined a small exercise group, and I awkwardly followed along beside her.

Later, we would sit on the balcony with tea, talking about ordinary things while the afternoon passed around us.

No shipments.

No coded calls.

No midnight emergencies from the docks.

For the first time in years, my life was quiet.

And slowly, I began to remember just how much of myself I had given to the Morettis.

In the early days, their harbor operation had been barely worth calling an operation.

The Family controlled a few warehouses and unreliable routes that could be shut down with a single police raid.

I spent three months practically living at the docks with a handful of trusted men.

We mapped new routes, found people who could be bought, replaced compromised contacts, and built a system that could keep shipments moving even when one part of the harbor was under surveillance.

By the end of those three months, the Morettis had their first stable route through the port.

The money followed soon after.

That was the first time the Family truly began to take me seriously.

Then came the attack from a rival Family.

Someone leaked information about one of our largest incoming shipments. Within hours, two warehouses were being watched, one route had been compromised, and millions of dollars in cargo were about to disappear.

Grant had been furious.

No one knew where the leak had come from or how much the other side knew.

I stayed awake for two straight days.

I traced every call, every manifest, every change made to the route.

In the end, I found the breach.

Then I used the false information already in their hands against them.

While the rival crew waited at an empty warehouse, our shipment entered through another part of the harbor and disappeared before they realized they'd been played.

We didn't lose a dollar.

They lost one of their most valuable routes instead.

After that night, no one in the harbor treated the Moretti name lightly again.

And then came the operation that changed everything.

The one that brought in five hundred million dollars and put three major ports under Moretti control.

The same operation Regina now claimed she had built.