Chapter 1 – THE GOLD CRUCIFIX IN THE RAIN
The morning after the dinner, the Moretti estate was suffocatingly quiet.
Maria stood by the kitchen window, watching the rain continue to fall over the slate courtyard. She had not slept. Her eyes burned, and the cream cardigan wrapped around her shoulders offered no real warmth.
At 7:00 AM, Nonna Lucia appeared in the hallway.
She wore a heavy black coat and held her wooden cane. Every Sunday, she attended morning mass at a small parish three miles away. Dante usually sent two guards with her. Today, because of the tension from the night before, the house felt empty.
“I’m coming with you,” Maria said.
Lucia stopped. She looked at Maria’s pale face and simply nodded. “Get your coat, my girl. The air is damp today.”
Ten minutes later, Maria sat beside the elderly woman in the back of the family’s black sedan. The driver, a young man named Leo who had worked for the family for three years, kept his eyes on the road.
“Dante is in his study,” Lucia said quietly as the car passed the iron gates. “He has been there all night.”
“I know,” Maria replied, staring at the rain slipping down the glass. “I don’t want to talk about him, Nonna. Not today.”
“You will have to eventually,” the old woman warned softly. “A wounded man is dangerous. A guilty man is unpredictable.”
They turned onto a narrow, tree-lined road leading toward the parish.
Maria reached out and gently touched the small gold crucifix resting against Lucia’s black coat. “How did you do it? How did you survive this family for so long without losing yourself?”
Lucia’s eyes softened. “I stopped asking for permission to exist.”
Before Maria could process the weight of those words, the sedan slammed to a violent halt.
Maria pitched forward, her seatbelt biting into her shoulder. Lucia gasped as her cane clattered to the floorboards.
A black SUV had blocked the narrow road entirely.
“Leo!” Maria shouted. “What’s happening?”
Leo didn’t answer.
Instead, he did something that made Maria’s blood turn to ice. He reached over, unlocked the back doors, and turned off the engine.
Two men stepped out of the blocking SUV. They wore dark raincoats, their faces obscured by the shadows of their hoods.
“Lock the doors!” Lucia commanded, her voice sharp with sudden authority.
But Leo just sat there, staring straight ahead.
The men reached the car. They pulled the back doors open. The cold October rain rushed into the warm interior.
“Lucia Moretti,” one of the men said, his voice flat. “You’re coming with us.”
Maria’s heart hammered against her ribs. She remembered the rules. She remembered Dante’s warnings. But looking at the fragile, eighty-three-year-old woman beside her, all fear evaporated into pure, desperate instinct.
“No,” Maria said.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and threw herself over Lucia, shielding the old woman with her own body.
“Take me,” Maria yelled, her voice trembling but fierce. “I’m Dante Moretti’s wife. I’m worth more to you than she is. Leave her here.”
The men hesitated. One of them tapped an earpiece, listening to a voice on the other end.
The reversal was instant.
“Change of plans,” the man muttered.
He reached in, grabbed Maria by the arm, and yanked her out into the freezing rain.
“Maria!” Lucia screamed, reaching for her.
As they dragged her toward the SUV, Maria looked back at the driver’s seat of her car. Leo turned his head to watch her go.
He wasn’t acting out of fear. He was smiling.
And resting on the dashboard in front of him was a delicate diamond bracelet. The exact same bracelet Bianca Romano had been wearing the night before.
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