🫖 The Little Girl Who Warned the Mafia Boss About the Tea

Chapter 04 - Breakfast With a Traitor

Dominic laughed.

It was the wrong laugh.

Too quick. Too bright. Too much air and not enough amusement.

“You’re dramatic before coffee,” he said.

Adrian set the tray on the writing desk, beside the untouched cup from the night before.

Lily leaned away from it.

Maria noticed.

So did Adrian.

Dominic’s eyes moved around the room, measuring exits, loyalties, witnesses. He had always been good at that. As a boy he could tell which adult was angry before the adult entered the room. As a man, that talent had become useful.

Now it made him look guilty.

“What papers?” Adrian asked.

Dominic smiled again, but smaller.

“Routine authority documents. Nothing urgent.”

“You brought Levine at breakfast for routine?”

“You’ve been unwell.”

“Have I?”

“Don’t do this.” Dominic glanced at Silas. “Not in front of staff.”

Maria’s shoulders stiffened.

Adrian saw it and felt the first clean anger of the morning.

Not rage.

Rage burned hot and made men stupid.

This was colder.

“Lily,” Adrian said without looking away from his brother, “do you remember which bottle Uncle Dominic used?”

The room seemed to stop breathing.

Dominic’s gaze snapped to the child.

Lily shrank into Maria but answered.

“The silver one.”

Dominic’s mouth opened, then closed.

Adrian looked at him.

“Empty your pockets.”

Dominic’s face hardened. “You cannot be serious.”

“Empty them.”

“I am your brother.”

“You should have remembered that before you walked into my bedroom with tea.”

For a moment, Dominic looked genuinely wounded.

That was the cruelty of family. Betrayal did not erase history. It dragged history bleeding behind it.

Dominic reached into his jacket and removed his phone, a money clip, two keys, and a small silver vial.

Maria drew in a sharp breath.

Dominic looked at the vial as if surprised to find it there.

Silas took one step forward.

Dominic moved faster than grief.

He grabbed Lily.

Maria screamed.

Adrian crossed the room before Dominic could fully pull the child away. His hand locked around Dominic’s wrist. The old weakness flared in his legs; for one horrifying second, Adrian thought his body might fail him.

Then Lily bit Dominic.

Hard.

Dominic cursed and released her.

Maria caught her daughter and stumbled back.

Silas drew his weapon.

Adrian did not. He stepped into his brother’s space and struck him once, open-handed across the mouth, not as a boss punishing a rival but as an older brother who had finally reached the end of mercy.

Dominic hit the wardrobe and tasted blood.

“You used a child as a shield,” Adrian said.

Dominic wiped his lip and smiled with red teeth.

“You used to understand necessity.”

“What did you give me?”

Dominic said nothing.

Silas picked up the silver vial with a handkerchief.

Dominic’s eyes followed it.

“That won’t prove anything.”

“No?” Adrian asked.

“No. Because if you had been thinking clearly, you’d realize something.” Dominic straightened his jacket. “I’m not the only one who touched your tea.”

Maria’s face tightened.

Dominic looked at her and smiled.

“Ask the housekeeper.”

Adrian did not turn.

Dominic saw that and sharpened his voice.

“Ask Maria what her father made before he burned in that pharmacy.”

Lily began to cry quietly into her mother’s shoulder.

Maria held her but did not look away.

“I did not drug him.”

“Of course not,” Dominic said. “You simply entered his home under a false name, carried your father’s old formulas in your head, and let your toddler wander into my brother’s bed at the exact perfect moment.”

The accusation hung there, ugly because it was not entirely empty.

Maria had lied.

That gave Dominic a handle.

Adrian finally looked at her.

She met his eyes, and what he saw there hurt more than suspicion.

She had expected him to doubt her.

Perhaps she believed men like Adrian always did.

Silas’s phone vibrated.

He answered, listened, and went still.

“The lab has a preliminary on the first cup.”

Adrian did not blink.

“What is it?”