Part 2: A WOMAN IN SILVER LUNGED TOWARD A PREGNANT HEIR BESIDE A CHAMPAGNE TOWER.

The guest kneeling among the broken crystal did not flinch as the jagged glass bit into his palm. His cufflink—gold, stamped with the crest of the DeMarco shipping empire—caught the glint of the chandelier. It was Julian, Elena’s first cousin and the vice-chair of the family foundation.

Rocco’s gaze shifted from the pinned woman in silver straight to Julian’s fingers.

Tucked against the underside of Julian’s palm wasn't a piece of stemware. It was a pneumatic spring-loaded autoinjector, no larger than a fountain pen, disguised as an antique lighter. The tip gleamed with a drop of amber-tinted synthetic neurotoxin designed to mimic sudden placental abruption.

"Julian," Rocco said, his voice flat, cutting cleanly beneath the rising panic in the ballroom. "Step back from the floor."

Julian looked up, his boyish face masked in innocent concern. "I’m just picking up the stem, Rocco. A girl could bleed out in shoes like hers."

"Drop the pen."

Elena leaned heavily against a fluted pillar, both hands cradling the swollen ridge of her belly. Her breath came in shallow, jagged gasps. A tight spasm knotted across her lower abdomen—not labor, but the terrifying clench of pure adrenaline. "Julian?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "What is he talking about?"

Julian didn't answer her. He didn't drop the injector either. Instead, with terrifying speed, he lunged forward, not toward Elena, but toward the pinned woman in silver. A clean sweep to silence the loose end.

Rocco moved like iron uncoiling. Leaving his knee planted on the silver-clad woman’s shoulder blades, he snapped his left arm out, catching Julian’s wrist in mid-arc. Bone ground against bone. Julian gasped, his fingers spasming open as the pressure hit a nerve cluster. The sleek metal tube clattered onto the wet marble, splashing into a pool of Dom Pérignon.

"Get Elena to the inner gallery," Rocco ordered without breaking Julian’s arm, though his fingers tightened until the young executive dropped to his knees. "Now!"

The Patriarch didn't flinch. In his tailored midnight-blue jacket, he stepped over the shattered flutes, the sole of his bespoke leather shoe crushing the antique injector beneath his heel. Glass and metal ground into powder.

"Julian," the old man said softly, his voice devoid of paternal warmth. "Your father told me forty years ago that greed makes men clumsy. He was right then. He is right tonight."

"Uncle, listen to me—" Julian choked out, his knees pressing into shards of crystal.

"Take him to the wine vault," the Patriarch instructed the two stone-faced security men flanking him. "Strip his phone. Strip his watch. Do not let him speak to anyone until I come down."

As Julian was dragged away, leaving twin streaks of crimson on the white floor from his cut knees, the woman in silver began to laugh. It was a ragged, wet sound, muffled against the marble floor where Rocco still kept her pinned.

"You think this ends with Julian?" she hissed, spitting a tooth onto the stone. "The contract wasn't paid in money, DeMarco. It was paid in shares. The ink was dry before the first toast was poured."