Chapter 2 – THE FORGED SIGNATURE ON THE PAYMENT RECEIPT

The blood on the leather glove glistened under the chandelier lights.

I kicked it further beneath the serving cart, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Thirty-two guests were staring at Luca Moretti, waiting for the explosion.

But the mafia boss didn’t yell.

He carefully folded the Swiss boarding school receipt and slipped it into his breast pocket.

“Everyone out,” Luca said.

Nobody moved. The command was so quiet, so devoid of theatrics, that the wealthy socialites seemed paralyzed by it.

“I said, get out of my house.”

Chairs scraped frantically against the hardwood. Champagne glasses tipped, spilling gold liquid over the white linen. Within sixty seconds, thirty-two people had fled toward the front doors, leaving only the wreckage of an engagement dinner behind.

Vanessa remained in her chair.

She was trembling so hard her diamond earrings rattled.

“Luca, please,” she choked out. “You’re misunderstanding everything. My father—”

“Your father is Don Bellini,” Luca interrupted, walking slowly around the table toward her. “We have an alliance. An alliance forged by this engagement. But I told him from the beginning: my son is off-limits. My past is off-limits.”

He stopped directly behind her chair.

“Who broke Caroline’s arm, Vanessa?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “She wouldn’t give up custody! My father said we couldn’t have a blended family. It makes you look weak to the other families. He just wanted to convince her to sign the boarding school papers!”

“By breaking her arm?”

“She fought back!” Vanessa cried.

I felt physically sick.

Caroline. The gentle woman who bought her son a single blue balloon every year. She had come to the gate today with a broken arm just to deliver a wooden telescope, pretending everything was fine so her son wouldn’t worry.

Luca didn’t touch Vanessa.

He didn’t need to. The space around him felt like it was pulling the oxygen from the room.

“Where is Caroline right now?” he demanded.

Vanessa looked away. “I don’t know. She dropped off the gift and my father’s men took her away.”

“Took her where?”

“I don’t know!”

Luca turned toward me.

“Rachel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When Caroline handed you the gift, did she say anything else?”

I desperately searched my memory.

“She… she gave the bag to Miss Vanessa first. But Miss Vanessa threw it on the ground. When I picked it up, Mrs. Moretti whispered something to me.”

“What did she say?”

I swallowed hard. “She said, ‘Tell Benjamin I’m sorry I couldn’t find the missing piece.’”

Luca froze.

“The missing piece?”

“Yes, sir. I thought she meant a piece of the telescope.”

Luca’s dark eyes widened in sudden realization.

He turned sharply toward the grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room.

“It’s not a telescope part,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “It’s a chess piece.”

Before I could ask what he meant, the heavy oak doors of the dining room banged open.

Three men in dark suits stepped inside.

They weren’t Luca’s men. They didn’t wear the Moretti crest on their lapels.

They wore the silver serpent of the Bellini family.

The man in the center—tall, scarred, with a broken nose—smiled thinly.

“Evening, Luca. Don Bellini sends his regards. He heard there was a misunderstanding about the wedding plans.”

Luca didn’t flinch. “You have ten seconds to tell me where my ex-wife is, Marco.”

Marco chuckled, reaching into his pocket.

“She’s safe. For now.”

He tossed an object onto the dining table.

It clattered against Vanessa’s empty champagne glass.

I gasped.

It was a small, intricately carved wooden knight. A chess piece.

But it was smeared with fresh blood.

“She put up a hell of a fight for this little thing,” Marco sneered. “Refused to let it go. We figured it belonged to you.”

Luca stared at the wooden knight.

A terrible, dark silence filled the room.

Then, Luca looked up at Marco.

“You opened the wrong door, Marco.”

“We have the house surrounded, Luca. Your guards are asleep. You’re going to marry Vanessa, and the boy is going to Switzerland. That’s the deal.”

“No,” Luca said softly.

He reached beneath the edge of the dining table.

There was a metallic click.

Before Marco could draw his weapon, the chandelier plunged into total darkness.

A single gunshot shattered the silence.

And in the darkness, a cold hand clamped over my mouth.

“Don’t scream, Rachel,” a voice whispered directly into my ear.

It wasn’t Luca.

It was a woman’s voice.

“It’s Caroline. We have to get Benjamin before they find him.”

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