Salvatore's POV
Salvatore sat behind his mahogany desk, morning light filtering through heavy drapes into his den.
Two phone calls in two days.
Two attacks on his family.
He picked up his phone. Scrolled to Alessandro's number.
Typed: Study. Now. It's about Francesca.
Two hours later, he could hear Alessandro's voice from below.
Alessandro entered without knocking, his face already set in hard lines.
He'd received enough of these summons to know when something was wrong.
"Close the door," Salvatore said quietly.
The lock clicked with finality.
"Sit."
"I need to tell you something," Salvatore began. "Two things, actually."
Alessandro's jaw tightened.
"The first concerns a phone call I received yesterday morning."
Salvatore recounted it, the anonymous caller from the Azure Club, and Massimo's table. What had been said about Francesca.
Every word.
He watched Alessandro's face change into something darker, colder, more dangerous than simple rage.
"He said she begged for it," Salvatore continued, his voice flat. "He said she couldn't keep her legs closed. He called the baby leverage. He made a toast, Alessandro. 'To fucking the Espositos in more ways than one.' Everyone at the table laughed."
Alessandro's hands gripped the arms of the chair. The leather creaked under the pressure.
"And then," Salvatore said, "he described her body. What she looked like. What sounds she made. Like she was something he'd purchased for the evening and was reviewing for his friends' entertainment."
The chair arm split.
A clean crack, wood splintering under Alessandro's grip.
Neither of them looked at it.
"Where is he?" Alessandro's voice came out rough, strangled. "Right now. Where is Massimo Domenico?"
"I don't know."
"Find out."
"No."
Alessandro stood. The motion was sharp, violent. "No?"
"Sit down."
"He talked about our sister like she was a whore and you want me to sit down?"
"Yes."
Alessandro stared at him. The air between them crackled with tension, with the promise of violence that had nowhere to go.
"There's a second thing I need to tell you," Salvatore said calmly. "About a different phone call."
He explained the lawyer. Bellini. The custody notice. Enzo's formal intent to pursue shared custodial rights upon the baby's birth.
Legal language for what Enzo really wanted: access, proximity, control.
Alessandro was still standing when Salvatore finished.
The rage hadn't left him.
He straightened his cuffs. Once. Twice.
"Bellini," he said, the name sitting in his mouth like something sour. "Bellini filed a custody notice."
"Yes."
Alessandro laughed like a maniac.
"Then Enzo Domenico has just made the single most catastrophic legal error of his life." He finally sat, not because Salvatore had asked him to, but because his mind was already working and his body needed to catch up.
"Tell me exactly what the notice said. Word for word."
Salvatore slid the document across the desk.
Alessandro read it once. Twice. Then he set it down with the careful precision of a man who had learned long ago that how you handled paper in a room told people everything about how you'd handle them.
"This is nothing," he said.
"It's a formal custody filing, Al "
"It's paper. Expensive paper with Bellini's letterhead, which I'll grant him, is impressive stationery." Alessandro folded his hands.
"But legally? This is nothing. And I'll tell you exactly why it will fail."
He held up one finger.
"First. The child has not been born. There is no legal person over whom custody can be exercised. In the eyes of the law, an unborn child holds no independent legal standing that entitles a third party to file custodial claims. Enzo cannot petition for rights over someone who does not yet, legally, exist as a rights-bearing individual. Any judge worth his robe will look at this filing and see it for what it is, premature, procedurally defective, and almost certainly designed to intimidate rather than to succeed."
Second finger.
"Second. Paternity. Enzo has not established paternity. He has claimed it. There is a considerable legal distance between those two things. Until a court-ordered paternity test confirms biological relation post-birth, he has no standing whatsoever. His lawyer knows this. Which means Bellini filed this not to win, but to plant a flag. To make noise. To put Francesca's name in a document alongside Enzo's and make it feel inevitable."
Third finger.
"Third. Even if paternity is established after the birth, a first-time custody petition requires the court to determine what arrangement serves the best interest of the child. And the best interest standard, Salvatore, is where Enzo Domenico will be buried."
Alessandro's voice dropped, quiet and precise. "We will build a file. His associates. His business dealings. The Azure Club. That table. Every man who sat at it and laughed." His eyes met Salvatore's.
"Every word he said about Francesca becomes evidence of his character. Of his fitness as a parent. Of the environment he would expose a child to."
He picked up the document again, held it between two fingers like it was mildly offensive.
"Bellini is good. I won't insult him by pretending otherwise. But he filed this to destabilize us. To make Francesca feel like the baby is already half gone." Alessandro set it back down. "So here is what we do. We do not respond emotionally. We do not respond quickly. We respond perfectly."
He stood again, this time with purpose rather than rage.
"I'll have a counter-motion drafted by tomorrow morning. We challenge the filing on procedural grounds, premature petition, absent paternity establishment, no legal personhood of the subject. We get it thrown out before it ever reaches a hearing." A pause.
"And then we make it very clear to Bellini, professionally and through the appropriate legal channels, that any future filings of this nature will be met with the full weight of everything I know about how to make a man's legal life extraordinarily difficult."
He buttoned his jacket.
"Enzo wants proximity, and control." Alessandro's voice was calm now, and somehow that was more frightening than the split chair arm. "He will have neither. Not while I am her brother. Not while I am a lawyer. And certainly not after what you just told me he said about her."
He picked up the document and tucked it under his arm.
"I'll need Francesca's medical records. Her OB's timeline. And I want every detail of how and when Enzo made this claim known." He moved toward the door. "And Salvatore."
He paused without turning.
"Find out where Massimo is. Don't tell me yet." A beat. "But find out."
The door closed quietly behind him.