Chapter 5 – THE WARNING LEFT IN THE CABINET

The phone slipped from my hand and clattered against the marble floor.

Tell Luca Moretti I kept the secret.

The words echoed in my head, loud and chaotic, drowning out the sound of the storm now raging outside the mansion’s towering windows.

My mother. My sweet, fragile mother who had just undergone major heart surgery. She had climbed out of her hospital bed and gotten into a car with strange men.

Because of Marco? Because of Vanessa?

I dropped to my knees to grab my phone, my vision blurring with panic.

A large, steady hand beat me to it.

Luca picked up the phone. He didn’t hand it back. Instead, he looked down at me, his dark eyes intense but surprisingly gentle.

“Hannah. Look at me.”

I couldn’t breathe. “They took her. Mr. Moretti, they took my mother—”

“Look at me,” he repeated, his voice firm enough to cut through my rising hysteria.

I forced myself to meet his gaze.

“Who were the men?” Luca asked.

“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “The nurse said a black car. She left a note. It said… it said to tell you she kept the secret.”

Luca’s expression changed. The gentle warmth vanished, replaced by the calculating, razor-sharp focus of the man who ran the city.

He turned to his lead guard, a tall man named Enzo.

“Lock down the hospital. Get the security footage from the front entrance, the parking garage, and the street cameras. Find out whose car that was. Now.”

Enzo nodded and sprinted out the door.

Teresa walked over, holding Sophie’s hand. The little girl looked terrified by the shouting and the guns, but she reached out and grabbed my apron string, holding on tightly.

“Luca,” Teresa said softly. “What secret could Hannah’s mother possibly have kept for you?”

Luca stared at the shattered wine glasses on the floor.

“Not for me, Mom,” Luca said slowly. “For my father.”

I stared at him in shock. “Your father? My mother was a surgical nurse. She didn’t know your family.”

Luca looked at me, his eyes full of complex shadows.

“Your mother’s name is Margaret Collins, isn’t it?”

I nodded, my stomach twisting.

“Twenty years ago,” Luca said, his voice lowering, “my father was shot outside a restaurant downtown. It was a hit organized by a rival family. He was rushed to St. Jude’s Hospital. He barely survived.”

I knew St. Jude’s. It was where my mother had worked her entire career.

“The doctors saved his life,” Luca continued. “But while he was in recovery, an assassin slipped into the ICU disguised as an orderly to finish the job.”

Teresa gasped, covering her mouth. “Luca, you never told me that.”

“Dad didn’t want you to worry,” Luca said. He looked back at me. “The assassin tried to inject poison into my father’s IV line. But a young nurse walked in. She fought him. She screamed for security and took a knife to the shoulder to protect my father.”

My hand flew to my mouth.

My mother had a deep, faded scar on her left shoulder. Growing up, she told me she had fallen off a bicycle onto a piece of glass.

“That nurse was your mother, Hannah,” Luca said quietly.

I couldn’t process it. “Why didn’t she ever tell me?”

“Because my father made her swear to stay quiet,” Luca explained. “To protect her. If the rival family knew she was the one who thwarted the hit, they would have come after her. And after you.”

He paused, looking toward the dark windows.

“My father set up a hidden trust fund for her as a thank you. Paid out in small, untraceable increments so no one would notice. That’s how she paid for her surgery, Hannah. Not by doing anything wrong. By being a hero.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks. My mother had lied to me my whole life to keep me safe.

But Vanessa had found out.

And Vanessa had told Marco.

“If Marco knows who she is,” Luca said, his voice tightening with urgency, “he might have sent his men to grab her before we detained him here. He could be using her as leverage.”

“Then we have to go get her!” I yelled, forgetting for a moment who I was talking to. I grabbed Luca’s arm. “Please! She’s sick, she can’t survive without her medication!”

Luca didn’t pull away. He looked down at my hand on his arm, and then he looked at my face.

“I protect the people who protect my family, Hannah,” Luca said, his voice an absolute vow. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

He turned to Teresa. “Mom. Take Sophie upstairs. Lock the doors. Enzo’s men will stay in the hall.”

“Daddy, where are you going?” Sophie cried.

Luca knelt down and kissed his daughter’s forehead.

“I have to go help Hannah’s mommy,” he whispered. “Just like Hannah helped yours tonight.”

Sophie nodded bravely, wrapping her arms around Teresa.

Luca stood up, pulling a fresh magazine from his jacket and sliding it into his pistol with a sharp click.

He looked at me.

“Come on,” he said.

We ran out into the pouring rain.

A sleek, armored black SUV was waiting in the driveway, the engine roaring. Luca opened the passenger door for me and then jumped into the driver’s seat.

He slammed his foot on the gas, tearing down the winding driveway of the estate.

My phone buzzed again.

I looked down. It was a text message from an unknown number.

It was a picture.

I let out a choked scream.

It was a photo of my mother, wearing her hospital gown, sitting slumped in the back of a van.

And next to her, holding up today’s newspaper, was a man I recognized instantly.

It wasn’t one of Marco’s men.

“Mr. Moretti,” I gasped, showing him the screen.

Luca glanced at the phone. He slammed on the brakes, the SUV skidding on the wet asphalt before coming to a violent stop.

Luca stared at the photo, his jaw dropping in pure shock.

The man holding the newspaper next to my mother… was supposed to be dead.