He Chose the Mafia Princess, So I Chose Her Father Chapter 09
Arianna sent two guards to bring me to the ballroom.
I had just finished Felix’s evening session. I was wearing a plain blue dress and carrying a folder of
progress notes.
Everyone else wore black tie.
Roman and Arianna stood beneath an arch of white
roses. Corrado sat at the head of the room, surrounded
by men whose names appeared in newspapers only when prosecutors disappeared.
Arianna lifted a champagne glass when I entered.
The same kind she had handed me the night everything changed.
“Since Tessa is so determined to become part of our
family,” she announced, “I thought she should join us.”
Roman would not meet my eyes.
A screen lit behind them.
The edited hotel footage began to play.
Me drinking.
Me stumbling.
Two men taking me toward the elevator.
Then a still image of me on Corrado’s private floor.
The room filled with whispers.
“Roman rejected her that night,” Arianna said. “Before
sunrise, she had already found a richer bed. When that
wasn’t enough, she used my little brother to enter my
father’s home.”
My skin went cold.
I looked at Roman.
He had seen the video before tonight. I knew from his face.
He had known what Arianna planned.
And he had chosen silence again.
“Say something,” Arianna told me.
I looked at the glass in her hand.
Memory returned in broken flashes.
Her smile.
The bitter taste beneath the champagne.
The security jackets.
Camera.
“You drugged me.”
Arianna laughed.
“Now you’re desperate.”
Corrado raised one finger.
The ballroom doors locked.
Every whisper stopped.
“Play the complete recording,” he said.
Arianna’s smile vanished.
Another video replaced hers.
It began twenty minutes earlier.
Arianna’s request to copy restricted hotel footage had alerted Corrado’s security chief. That request became
the thread his men followed back to her assistant.
The ballroom camera showed Arianna speaking to a
waiter. She pointed toward me, exchanged one champagne glass for another, and handed him an
envelope.
The service corridor camera showed the same waiter
passing a small bottle to one of Arianna’s men.
Then came the elevator footage.
I was barely standing. One man held me up while the
other checked a camera hidden beneath his jacket.
“The suite they booked contained three recording
devices,” Corrado said. “The men were paid from an
account controlled by Arianna’s personal assistant.
The remaining champagne tested positive for a sedative.”
Arianna turned toward him.
“Dad, I only wanted to scare her. She was trying to
steal Roman.”
“Roman was already hers when you announced the engagement.”
The words cut through the room.
Roman finally looked at me.
Corrado continued.
“Your men intended to assault her, record it, and use the video to force her out of Chicago.”
“They wouldn’t have gone that far.”
“One of them described the plan in detail after I broke his wrist.”
Arianna dropped the glass.
It shattered at her feet.
Corrado looked at Roman next.
“You watched her being humiliated tonight.”
Roman swallowed.
“I didn’t know about the drug.”
“You knew enough to ask no questions.”
No one moved.
Corrado stood.
“The engagement is over. Every contract offered to the
Bellini family through this marriage is withdrawn.”
Roman’s father rose from his chair.
“Corrado, we can settle this privately.”
“Sit down.”
He did.
That was how powerful Corrado was.
One quiet order, and a man who commanded armed crews across Chicago obeyed like a child.
Arianna reached for her father.
Corrado stepped back.
“You no longer speak for this family. Your accounts
are frozen. Until the police finish with the men you
hired, you will remain at the Lake Geneva house under guard.”
“You’re choosing her over your own daughter?”
“I’m choosing not to protect what you did.”
Guards escorted Arianna away.
Roman remained beneath the white roses, staring at
the future disappearing around him.
Then Corrado gave him one final truth.
“Do you remember the woman in my car the night you
came to discuss this dinner?”
Roman’s face changed.
“That was Tessa.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Roman looked at me as if he had never seen me before.
I knew exactly what he remembered.
The black windows.
The woman hidden beneath Corrado’s jacket.
The sound he had almost recognized.
Roman followed me when I left the ballroom.
“Tessa, wait.”
I kept walking.
“I didn’t know Arianna drugged you, I swear.”
I stopped.
“You didn’t know she drugged me.”
Relief flashed across his face too soon.
“Exactly. She fooled both of us.”
“Did she fool you when you announced your engagement while I was still your girlfriend?”
He said nothing.
“Did she fool you when you offered to keep me in an apartment?”
“Tessa-”
“What about the rain? When you stood outside Corrado’s car and spoke about the woman inside as if she were part of the entertainment? Did Arianna put those words in your mouth too?”
His face emptied.
I had heard every word through the open window.
“I didn’t know it was you,” he whispered.
“That is the point.”
I stepped away from him.
“To you, a woman only matters once you know she belongs to someone powerful.”
Roman reached for me.
Carbone guards moved between us.
This time, he could not touch me.