"Where is what?" asked Clara, not understanding why everyone was looking at her as if she were already guilty.

 

"Where is what?" asked Clara, not understanding why everyone was looking at her as if she were already guilty.

Vincenzo Moretti's face had become even harder. In his hand, he held an empty watch case.

"My watch."

Clara's heart skipped a beat.

"I didn't take it."

"You were the last person to walk past my table."

"I didn't take it."

Her voice wasn't loud. She never knew how to speak loudly. But there was something calm and upright in her way of answering that should have been enough to stop the scene.

That's not enough.

Because in places like the Sapphire Lounge, the truth mattered less than the person who spoke the loudest.

The cold blond hair of the woman in the silver dress turns towards her with a contemptuous smile.

"Tread on it."

Clara stepped back immediately.

"You don't have the right."

But one of Enzo's men had already stepped forward. He emptied his small bag onto a table. A few bills, an old wallet, some cheap makeup, a metro pass, a pair of broken headphones.

Then he opens his coat pocket.

And the watch appeared in his hand.

An enormous silence fell over the club.

Clara felt the blood leave her face.

" Nope… "

She shakes her head.

" I don't understand… "

But Enzo was no longer trying to understand.

He strides across the room.

The GIF moved so fast that it didn't even have time to move back.

Her head turned to the side. She tasted the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth. Glasses fell around her with a sound like shattering crystal.

"You stole from me," he said in an icy voice.

She slowly raised her eyes towards him.

She should have cried.

She should have provided it.

But something inside her broke in a different way.

Because she knew she hadn't done anything.

Because she knew someone had slipped that watch into her pocket.

And because deep down, an old fear had just been reawakened.

This fear reminded her why she had changed her name.

Why she had left Chicago.

Why had her mother always told her never to look for her father?

She slowly slipped a trembling hand into the back pocket of her apron.

Enzo was still looking at her.

Then she took out an old grey, scratched telephone, almost ridiculous amidst all this luxury.

She pressed a single key.

The line disconnected at the first beep.

Clara closes her eyes.

" Dad… "

The word was barely louder than a whisper.

But he crosses the room like a bullet.

Enzo froze.

He didn't know why.

Something in his voice.

Someone chose how they said that word.

Someone chose this girl whom he had been watching since the beginning of the evening with this strange feeling of déjà vu.

At the other end of the line, a deep voice answered immediately:

"Clara?"

She had tears in her eyes now.

"I need you."

"Where are you?"

“Sapphire Lounge.” Tribeca. »

Silence.

Then :

"Who touched you?"

Clara looked Vincenzo straight in the eyes.

Her lip was still bleeding.

"Vincenzo Moretti."

Enzo's face barely changed.

But his gaze wavered.

Because he knows that voice.

He had heard it before.

Years earlier.

In another city.

In another life.

The man on the phone replies, even more coldly:

"Don't move. I'm coming."

The call was cut off.

The blonde woman burst into a nervous little laugh.

"Seriously? You called your father?"

Clara did not reply.

Because she wasn't calling for an ordinary father.

She was calling the only man that even men like Enzo avoided provoking.

Seven minutes later, the doors of the Sapphire Lounge burst open.

Four men entered first. Tall. Silent. Armed.

Then a fifth man slowly advanced behind them.

Grey hair at the temples. Black coat. Tired but dangerous look.

Gabriel De Luca.

The name still circulated in hushed conversations. Former crime boss in Chicago. Vanished years ago after a bloody war that left dozens dead in its wake.

Everyone thought he had retired.

Everyone was wrong.

He saw Clara.

Her cheek was red.

Blood at the corner of her mouth.

And he turned pale.

No anger.

Not right away.

Something worse.

An immense pain.

He crossed the room without looking at anyone and knelt before her.

" My darling… "

Clara finally broke down.

She began to cry in his arms like a child who had waited too long.

Gabriel placed a trembling hand on her hair.

Then he slowly raises his eyes to Enzo.

"Who hit her?"

No one is speaking.

Then Clara gently raised her hand towards Vincenzo.

The silence that followed was unbearable.

Gabriel slowly got up.

He approaches Enzo.

The guards on both sides immediately tensed up.

But Enzo raised a hand to prevent his people from moving.

Because he was looking at Gabriel.

And Gabriel was watching him too.

A long time.

For too long.

Then Gabriel frowned slightly.

" What's your name ? "

"Vincenzo Moretti."

Gabriel did not respond immediately.

His eyes slid towards Clara.

Then they returned to Enzo.

And something in his chosen expression changed.

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-two years old."

Gabriel's face slowly turned white.

Thirty-two years old.

Thirty-two years earlier, her daughter Isabella had fallen in love with a young man from New York. An ambitious man. Dangerous. Magnetic.

Vincenzo Moretti.

She became pregnant at eighteen.

Then she disappeared before he could find her.

Gabriel had spent years searching for her.

When he finally found her, she was already dying.

And in the small house where she lived hidden, he had discovered Clara.

His granddaughter.

He had wanted to protect her.

Keep her away from this world.

Far from his father.

Because he believed Vincenzo didn't deserve to know.

Gabriel looked at Enzo once more.

Then he whispered:

"Isabelle."

The name struck Enzo like a knife blow.

Her eyes widened.

" Nope… "

Hi Clara.

Then Gabriel.

Then Clara again.

The same eye shape.

The same slight dimple on the left cheek.

The same small scar above the eyebrow.

He feels the ground disappear beneath his feet.

"Isabella died three years ago," Gabriel said coldly. "But before she died, she asked me for one thing: to protect her daughter."

Clara looked at Enzo without speaking.

He seemed unable to breathe.

"She is..." he began.

Gabriel did not look away.

"Yes. She's your daughter."

No one in the room dared to move.

Vincenzo Moretti, the man everyone feared, suddenly seemed lost.

Completely lost.

He looked at Clara as if it was the first time he had ever really seen her.

And for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed.

Shame for his anger.

Shame for his violence.

She was ashamed of the way she had backed away when he had tried to approach her.

His own daughter was afraid of him.

He took a step towards her.

Clara stepped back immediately.

And this simple movement destroys him more than anything else.

He slowly lowered his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

No one had ever heard Vincenzo Moretti say those words.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, his voice even lower. "If I had known..."

But Clara gently clasped her head.

"You should never have needed to know who I was to avoid hitting me."

The sentence runs right through Enzo.

Because she was right.

Absolutely right.

At that moment, one of the security men returned to them with a tablet.

"Based on the camera footage."

The video clearly shows the blonde woman discreetly taking the watch and slipping it into Clara's coat pocket while she was clearing the table.

Because she was jealous.

Because she had seen Enzo looking at Clara for one second too long.

Because she had wanted to hurt him.

The woman immediately began to cry.

"Enzo, please, I didn't mean for it to go this far..."

But he wasn't even looking at her anymore.

His eyes remained on Clara.

Always.

As if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

"Take her out," he said simply.

The woman screamed, begged, and clung to the tables.

No one moved to help him.

Because here, everyone knew how to recognize the exact moment when someone had lost everything.

When she finally disappeared, silence fell again.

Enzo slowly takes off his jacket and places it on Clara's shoulders.

She hesitates.

Then she hugged it tightly.

Because she was cold.

Because she was tired.

Because deep down, despite all her pain, despite all her anger, a small part of her continued to look at this man with this terrible question:

Why weren't you here before?

Enzo looked at her for a long time.

Then he said softly:

"I can't change what I did to you tonight. I can't erase these twenty-two years. But if you give me just one chance... just one... I'll spend the rest of my life trying to become the man you should have had as a father."

Clara felt the tears returning.

Because she had waited for this moment her whole life.

And because she no longer even knew if she wanted to forgive him.

So she wasn't wrong.

She only just approaches Gabriel.

And as she slowly left the Sapphire Lounge between the two men who represented her entire past, Vincenzo remained motionless in the middle of the empty room, surrounded by wealth, power, and silence…

And for the first time in his life, he understood that there was something that no empire, no threat, and no money could buy.

The forgiveness of a wounded girl.