HE MADE ME HIS DECOY WHILE LOVING MY SISTER—SO I MARRIED THE “VEGETABLE” MAFIA HEIR AND WOKE THE MONSTER THEY ALL FEARED

PART 2: THE MAN THEY CALLED DEAD

I did not scream.

That was probably why Victor trusted me.

A foolish woman would have shouted for doctors.

A frightened woman would have run.

A desperate woman would have told the first person who promised protection.

I did none of those things.

I sat back down, folded my hands in my lap, and looked at the man everyone called a vegetable.

“Can you open your eyes?”

One tap.

No.

“Can you speak?”

“Can you hear everything?”

Yes.

The room shifted around me.

Victor Ashford was not gone.

He was trapped.

A living mind sealed inside a body everyone had already started dividing.

I leaned closer, keeping my voice barely above breath.

“Is it safe to tell your mother?”

A pause.

Then two taps.

My skin prickled.

Helena Ashford controlled this house.

If Victor did not trust her, the rot was deeper than I imagined.

I asked the most important question.

“Did someone inside your family arrange the ambush?”

Rain hit the glass harder.

The machines kept their gentle rhythm.

My marriage had lasted six hours, and already my comatose husband had become the first person in years to tell me the truth.

I went to my room and did not sleep.

By dawn, I had created a code.

One tap for yes.

Two for no.

Three for danger.

Four for names.

Over the next week, I visited Victor every night after the staff changed shifts. I learned which nurse was careless, which guard gambled, which hallway camera flickered for nine seconds at 2:13 a.m.

Powerful houses always have blind spots.

So do broken hearts.

Victor told me what he could.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Through taps, blinking when he could, tiny movements of his hand when his strength allowed.

His ambush had not been random.

He had discovered that someone inside the Ashford organization was selling routes, laundering weapons money through medical charities, and preparing to hand territory to Dante’s enemies.

He had hidden evidence before the attack.

The man who betrayed him was not his rival.

It was his uncle, Silas Ashford.

Helena’s brother.

Acting head of the family while Victor lay in bed.

The loving uncle who came every morning, touched Victor’s shoulder, and called him “my poor boy” while poison moved through the empire.

“Where is the evidence?” I whispered on the ninth night.

Victor’s fingers moved.

Four taps.

Name.

I began reciting places.

Office?

Safe?

Car?

Chapel?

Garden?

Then I thought of the scar near his temple and the old Ashford ring on his right hand. A heavy signet ring with a black stone.

“Ring?”

The next morning, I asked Helena whether I could keep Victor’s ring beside his bed.

“It seems uncomfortable on his hand,” I said.

Helena watched me.

“You notice details.”

“I married a man who cannot speak. Details are all he has.”

Something moved behind her eyes.

She allowed it.

Inside the ring, beneath the black stone, was a microdrive.

Victor had hidden an empire inside a family heirloom.

I did not open it on any Ashford device.

I used a laptop bought in cash under a fake name, inside a hotel room paid for with one of my private accounts.

The files took eleven minutes to decrypt.

When they opened, I understood why someone had tried to kill him.

Bank routes.

Names.

Police contacts.

Payments to judges.

Shipments.

Photos.

Audio files.

And one folder labeled:

MORETTI CHANNEL

My stomach tightened.

Dante.

I opened it.

Not because I wanted to.

Because truth does not become kinder when ignored.

Inside were intercepted messages between Silas Ashford and a Moretti lieutenant named Rafe Bellini.

Not Marco.

Not Dante directly.

But close enough to stain.

They discussed weakening Victor’s faction, destabilizing Ashford operations, and ensuring Dante Moretti could marry into Voss without interference.

Then I found the file that made my hands go numb.

DECOY: AVA VOSS

My name.

Photos of me with Dante.

Schedules.

Locations.

Threat assessments.

Notes about how Dante’s enemies viewed me as his weakness.

Another document from Rafe to Silas:

Moretti allows continued public association with Ava Voss to mask true interest in Lydia Voss. Ava remains useful as misdirection. If targeted, Moretti retaliation expected but strategic loss acceptable.

Strategic loss acceptable.

I stared at those three words until they stopped looking like English.

For five years, I had called myself loved.

They had called me acceptable loss.

I closed the laptop.

Then reopened it.

Grief could wait.

Evidence could not.

I copied everything.

Three encrypted drives.

One with my lawyer.

One hidden in Ashford estate grounds.

One taped beneath the drawer of Victor’s bedside table, because sometimes arrogance makes the safest hiding place the one no one believes you would choose.

Two weeks after the wedding, Dante came to see me.

He arrived at Ashford estate in a black convoy that made the guards stand straighter and the cameras turn like eyes.

I met him in the west drawing room.

Not alone.

Helena sat near the fireplace.

Silas stood by the bar, smiling like a man who enjoyed watching knives placed carefully on tables.

Dante’s gaze found me immediately.

For one moment, the room disappeared.

I hated that my body remembered him.

I hated that five years could not be burned out in two weeks.

He looked at my black dress, my wedding ring, my calm face.

“You look well, Mrs. Ashford.”

The title landed between us.

I smiled.

“You look tired, Mr. Moretti.”

His jaw shifted.

Helena lifted her teacup.

“To what do we owe the honor?”