Chapter 3 – A VEIL OF THREATS OVER A CHILD

The silence in the office was so thick I felt like I was drowning in it.

Vanessa stood by the door, her plush white robe looking like a shroud in the dim light. She had said my son’s name. Leo. A name I had never spoken within these walls. A name not written on any of my employment files, precisely because I knew the kind of people I worked for.

I took a step toward her, my burned arm throbbing, blind maternal rage momentarily eclipsing my fear.

“How do you know my son’s name?” I demanded, my voice shaking uncontrollably.

Vanessa offered a delicate, practiced sigh, waving her hand as if swatting away a fly. “Oh, please, Mara. I run the household finances. I make it my business to know the backgrounds of the people serving my food. It’s a mother’s intuition to worry, but you really shouldn’t overreact.”

Luca stepped out from behind the desk.

He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes entirely locked on his fiancée. The space between them seemed to vibrate with a lethal, coiled energy.

“Vanessa,” Luca said gently. Too gently. “Why were you looking into the background of a cleaning maid?”

“Because I am protecting you, Luca!” she snapped, the polite veneer cracking just a fraction. “You let these people walk through our home, handle our silver, overhear our conversations. Someone has to vet them properly.”

She glanced at the silver locket resting on the desk, right next to the yellow train ticket.

“And clearly,” she added, her voice dropping into a sneer, “I was right to be suspicious. Whatever lie she’s telling you about that cheap piece of jewelry, she’s just trying to extort you.”

Luca picked up the locket. The broken chain dangled from his large, tattooed hand.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Luca said softly. “I opened it myself. It’s a picture of her dead husband. The husband who was killed in a hit-and-run two years ago.”

Vanessa didn’t flinch. She was a spectacular liar.

“How tragic,” she said coldly. “Perhaps she dropped it while she was spying on us earlier.”

“It was under the rug where you were sitting, Vanessa. Where you dropped your purse.”

“Then a maid must have kicked it there! Luca, you cannot seriously be taking the word of a desperate woman who couldn’t even pay her rent this morning over mine. My family is merging our entire empire with yours in three weeks. Are you really going to let this… this nobody drive a wedge between us?”

She was trying to remind him of the stakes. The Bellini family was the second most powerful syndicate on the coast. This marriage was a treaty. If Luca broke it, there would be blood in the streets.

Luca looked at her for a long, quiet moment.

“Marco,” Luca said, not touching the intercom.

The head of security, who had been standing silently in the shadows of the hallway the entire time, stepped into the doorway behind Vanessa.

Vanessa jumped, whirling around.

“Have my car brought to the front,” Luca ordered. “Four armed men in the escort. I am taking Mara home.”

Vanessa’s face went pale. “Luca, you are crossing a line.”

“And you,” Luca said, finally letting the icy rage bleed into his voice, “are going back to your suite. You will not leave it. You will not make a phone call. If you attempt to communicate with your father, Marco will personally break your fingers.”

Vanessa opened her mouth to scream, to threaten, to throw her father’s power in his face. But the look in Luca’s eyes silenced her completely. She turned and practically fled down the hallway, Marco falling into step right behind her.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the back of Luca’s armored SUV. The rain had started to fall, smearing the neon lights of the city across the bulletproof glass.

I was trembling violently, my hands clamped together in my lap.

Luca sat across from me in the spacious cabin, pouring a small glass of whiskey from the built-in console. He handed it to me.

“Drink,” he commanded gently. “It will steady your nerves.”

I took a sip. The liquid burned my throat, but it stopped the violent shaking in my hands.

“She knows where my son is,” I whispered, the terror finally breaking free. “If they killed David… if they know who I am… they’re going to hurt Leo.”

“Nobody is going to touch your son, Mara,” Luca said, his voice an iron vault of certainty. “I am putting a permanent detail on your apartment. But I need you to think. Why would the Bellini family kill a mechanic from New Jersey? What did David know?”

I shook my head frantically, tears spilling into my lap. “Nothing! He just fixed cars! He worked at a garage on 4th Street. He came home with grease on his hands every night. We were normal people, Mr. Moretti.”

Luca stared out the window into the dark rain. “Normal people don’t buy midnight train tickets with cash and get hunted down by cartel hitmen.”

The SUV pulled up to the rundown apartment building where my neighbor, Mrs. Gable, babysat Leo.

I threw the door open before the car even stopped rolling, sprinting up the concrete stairs to the second floor. Luca was right behind me, his hand resting casually inside his suit jacket where I knew he carried a weapon.

I pounded on the door. “Mrs. Gable! It’s Mara! Open up!”

A moment later, the deadbolt clicked. The elderly woman peeked through the chain, looking exhausted. “Mara, dear, it’s late.”

“Where is Leo?” I demanded, pushing past her as she opened the door.

I ran into the small, cluttered living room.

Leo was sound asleep on the pull-out sofa, wrapped in a faded quilt. He was perfectly safe. He was breathing steadily.

I collapsed to my knees beside the bed, burying my face in his small chest, sobbing with pure, unadulterated relief.

But as I pulled back to kiss his forehead, my hand brushed against something hard tucked under his pillow.

I pulled it out.

It was a beautifully carved wooden horse. A piece of expensive, handcrafted mahogany.

“Mrs. Gable,” I asked, my blood turning to ice. “Where did Leo get this?”

The old woman rubbed her eyes. “Oh, the lovely lady who visited this afternoon gave it to him. She said she was your new boss. She wore such a pretty red dress.”

Vanessa had been here. Today. While I was scrubbing her floors, she was standing over my sleeping child.

I turned the wooden horse over in my trembling hands.

Taped to the bottom of the toy was a small, folded piece of paper. It was a child’s drawing. Leo’s drawing.

But when I unfolded it, the drawing of a smiling sun and a house had been crossed out with a thick black marker.

And drawn on the back, in precise, elegant red ink, was a detailed map of the Moretti estate.

With a bright red X marking the East Gate vault.