Chapter 2 - The Red Room in the West Wing
The door to Suite Four was solid mahogany, banded with decorative brass straps.
From inside, the muffled sound of tearing fabric and a heavy thud against a drywall partition resonated into the hallway.
“Shut up, you little brat! Vanessa already took the cash—you belong to me for the weekend!”
Richard Vale’s private security guard, a burly six-foot-four enforcer in a tactical leather jacket, stood outside the door, his hand resting on the butt of an unholstered automatic.
When the guard saw Luca Moretti rounding the corner of the gallery, he fumbled for his weapon, raising the barrel—
Luca didn't slow his stride.
He closed the ten-foot distance in a fraction of a heartbeat. His left hand slapped the guard’s gun hand aside, redirecting the muzzle into the plaster ceiling, while his right elbow drove forward with concussive, freight-train force into the center of the man's throat.
The guard’s larynx collapsed with a sickening, wet crunch.
The man hit the floorboards like a felled ox, choking on his own breath, completely incapacitated.
Luca didn't even look down at him. He stepped squarely in front of the mahogany door, drew back his heavy leather dress shoe, and kicked the brass deadbolt straight through the frame.
BOOM.
The heavy wood splintered in half, the door flying inward and crashing against the wall.
The scene inside the room turned my blood to liquid nitrogen.
My nineteen-year-old sister, Katie, was pinned against the edge of an antique vanity, her white blouse torn at the shoulder, a dark red contusion blooming along her left cheekbone where she had been struck. She was fighting like a cornered cat, her fingernails clawing at the throat of Richard Vale’s nephew, Thomas Vale—a thirty-year-old trust-fund brute who had pinned her wrists against the mahogany wood with one hand while trying to tear her skirt with the other.
“Katie!” I screamed, lunging into the room.
Thomas Vale turned his head, his face flushed with bourbon and sweat, his mouth opening in an arrogant snarl: “Get the hell out of here, you—”
The words died in his throat forever.
Luca Moretti crossed the room before the boy could draw another breath.
His left hand caught Thomas Vale by the throat, lifting the two-hundred-pound man clean off the floor as if he were an empty sack of grain, tearing him completely away from my sister.
Luca slammed him backward against the plate-glass window overlooking the frozen gardens.
The heavy reinforced glass spider-webbed with a high, crystalline shriek beneath the impact.
“Do you know who owns the floor you're bleeding on, Thomas?” Luca whispered.
His voice was so quiet, so devoid of human inflection, that Thomas Vale began to urinate down his trousers, his hands clawing uselessly at Luca’s tattooed forearms.
“M-Mr. Moretti... please!” Thomas choked out, his eyes bulging against his sockets. “Vanessa said... Vanessa said the girl was paid for! She said she was a temp from the agency!”
I fell to my knees beside the vanity, gathering Katie into my arms. My sister was sobbing uncontrollably, her entire body shaking with violent tremors as she buried her face into my neck, clutching my apron with white knuckles.
“Emma... he hit me,” Katie wept, her voice breaking into ragged gasps. “He locked the door and took my phone... he told me no one would hear me scream over the music...”
“I’m here, baby,” I sobbed, kissing her bruised cheek, wrapping my sweater around her torn blouse. “I’m here. He will never touch you again.”
Luca slowly turned his head toward the doorway.
Richard Vale stood in the threshold, flanked by Vanessa Bellini.
Vanessa’s face was the color of curdled cream, her emeralds trembling against her chest, her hands clutched together in sheer, suffocating panic.
Richard Vale took one look at his nephew pinned against the cracked glass, and his wealthy, arrogant composure completely dissolved into groveling terror.
“Luca... listen to me!” Richard pleaded, his hands raised in surrender. “This was a misunderstanding between the kids! My nephew had too much to drink! I will pay five hundred thousand dollars in compensation! Name your price!”
Luca didn't drop Thomas.
He turned his obsidian eyes onto Richard Vale.
May you like
“My price, Richard,” Luca whispered, each syllable dropping like an iron anvil onto stone, “is every breath you have left in your lungs.”
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