Chapter 2 – THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“My mother?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Luca walked slowly toward me, holding the tiny, torn photograph. He turned it around so I could see.

It was an old Polaroid, edges yellowed with age.

It showed my mother, younger, smiling in front of a brick house.

But she wasn’t alone.

Standing next to her, his arm wrapped around her waist, was a young Luca Moretti.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

Luca stared at me, his dark eyes searching my face. “Your mother is Mary Mercer?”

“Yes.”

“Mary Mercer died eleven years ago.”

My breath caught. “No, sir. She’s in the hospital. I’ve been paying her medical bills.”

Luca went completely still.

The silence in the room was deafening.

“Eleven years ago,” Luca said slowly, “my first fiancée disappeared. Her name was Mary.”

The serving tray slipped from my hands, crashing to the floor.

Vanessa gasped from the corner of the room. “You’re lying! The maid is lying!”

But Luca wasn’t listening to her. He was looking at my eyes, my hair, the shape of my jaw.

“You’re twenty-six,” Luca murmured.

“Yes.”

“Mary disappeared eleven years ago. You were fifteen.”

“I… I was,” I stammered. “But she didn’t disappear. We moved to Seattle. We changed our names. We hid.”

Luca’s expression twisted in agony. “Hid from who? From me?”

“No,” I said, tears blurring my vision. “From your father.”

Luca took a step back, as if he’d been shot.

His father, the former boss of the Moretti family, had died of a heart attack five years ago.

“My father told me she ran away,” Luca whispered. “He said she took a payoff.”

“She took a bullet,” I cried, the memories I’d suppressed for over a decade flooding back. “Your father’s men came to our house. They shot her. She survived, but they told her if she ever came near you again, they would kill me.”

Sofia tugged on my apron, her small face filled with confusion and fear.

Luca dropped to his knees, right there in the dining room, burying his face in his hands.

The ruthless mafia boss was weeping.

“All these years,” he choked out. “All these years I thought she abandoned me.”

Then, he looked up.

His eyes locked onto Vanessa.

“My father is dead,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, lethal register. “So who was the man on the phone? Who ordered my sister taken tonight?”

Vanessa pressed her back against the wall, sliding down to the floor.

“It was his right-hand man,” Vanessa sobbed. “Your father’s old enforcer.”

“Marco,” Luca breathed.

“He said Elena was digging too deep,” Vanessa cried. “He said she found the old financial records. She knew Marco had been stealing from the family for a decade, hiding behind your father’s ghost.”

Luca stood up. The sorrow in his eyes vanished, replaced by pure violence.

“Daniel,” Luca barked.

Daniel stepped forward. “Yes, Boss.”

“Get the cars ready. We’re going to Marco’s.”

But Daniel didn’t move.

Instead, he reached into his jacket.

He pulled out a suppressed handgun and aimed it directly at Luca’s chest.

“I’m sorry, Boss,” Daniel said, his voice devoid of emotion. “Marco says it’s time for a change in leadership.”

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