Chapter 3 - ECHOES IN THE MARBLE
The cry hung in the air like a ghost.
For three seconds, not a single person in the grand dining room breathed.
Forty high-society elites, politicians, and syndicate bosses sat frozen in their velvet chairs.
Their expensive forks hovering inches from plates of uneasted food.
They looked like statues carved out of fear and expensive cologne.
Luca Moretti didn't wait for permission.
In two long, fluid strides, he turned his back on Vanessa and walked out of the dining room toward the vaulted foyer.
His leather shoes made sharp, rhythmic slaps against the marble flooring.
“Luca! Don't you dare!” Vanessa shrieked.
Her voice cracked as she abandoned her polite composure entirely.
Lifting the heavy silk hem of her red gown and stumbling after him.
“It’s a trap!”
“It’s some cheap stunt orchestrated by your sister to ruin our engagement night!”
I didn't think.
My feet moved on their own, following behind Teresa’s wheelchair as the old woman gripped the wheels with trembling, arthritic hands.
Pushing herself forward with a desperate strength born of pure maternal terror.
“Wait for me, Mrs. Moretti!” I whispered.
Hurrying to grab the handles of her chair and wheeling her swiftly out of the dining room and into the vast, echoing expanse of the front hall.
The foyer was lit by a single massive iron chandelier overhead.
Casting long, dramatic shadows across the sweeping double staircase.
And right there, standing shivering in the center of the white marble floor, was a young woman who looked like a ghost of the family's past.
Sofia Moretti.
She was twenty-two years old, wearing a thin, soaked trench coat that had lost its belt.
Her dark hair—the exact same shade as Luca’s—was plastered to her pale cheeks by freezing winter rain and melting snow.
In her arms, clutched desperately against her chest inside a damp, oversized wool blanket, was a tiny bundle.
Another faint, raspy whimper came from inside the blanket.
“Sofia?” Luca stopped dead in his tracks.
His voice dropped to a raw, ragged whisper that I had never heard from the ruthless mafia boss before.
The young woman raised her head.
Her eyes were hollow, bruised purple beneath the lids from days of sleeplessness and terror.
When she saw her brother standing there under the warm lights of the mansion, her knees buckled.
“Luca...” she choked out, a sob tearing through her throat.
“They... they wouldn't let me in.”
“The guard at the gate... he said my access card was canceled.”
“He said... he said I didn't exist anymore.”
Vanessa burst into the foyer just then.
Her face twisted in rage as she rushed past Luca.
“Get her out of here!” Vanessa screamed.
Pointing a trembling, diamond-ringed finger at the freezing girl on the floor.
“Are you out of your mind, bringing a bastard child into Luca’s home unannounced?”
“Security! Get these beggars off the property right now!”
Two burly men in black suits—men I recognized as Vanessa’s personal bodyguards—stepped out from the shadows near the front doors.
Their heavy boots thudding against the floor as they moved toward Sofia.
“Don't you dare touch her,” Luca said.
His voice wasn't loud.
It was barely above a whisper.
But the two bodyguards froze mid-stride.
Their boots skidding slightly on the polished marble as if they had just run face-first into an invisible brick wall.
They looked at Luca’s face—at the dark, lethal fury burning in his obsidian eyes—and took two steps backward.
Instantly melting back into the shadows.
Vanessa’s jaw dropped.
“Luca! Look at her!”
“She’s trying to trap you into supporting her financial mess!”
“Her husband is a nobody, and this child—”
“Shut your mouth, Vanessa,” Luca interrupted.
His tone was so cold it felt like liquid nitrogen being poured over the room.
He didn't look at her.
He didn't even blink.
He walked past his fiancée as if she were nothing more than a piece of discarded furniture.
His gaze locked entirely on his trembling younger sister.
Teresa let out a ragged, heartbreaking cry from her wheelchair.
“My baby...” the old woman sobbed.
Reaching out her shaking, arthritic hands as I wheeled her right up to where Sofia sat on the cold floor.
“Oh, my sweet girl... look at you.”
Sofia dropped to her knees.
Burying her face in her mother’s lap, weeping uncontrollably as Teresa wrapped her frail arms around her shoulders.
“Mom... I'm so sorry,” Sofia wept, her voice breaking into jagged pieces.
“They told me... they told me if I ever came back to the estate, Luca would have us both thrown out.”
“They said my husband’s debts... they said they were going to take everything.”
Luca knelt down beside them on the cold marble.
He didn't care about his expensive Italian suit getting wet from the melting snow on Sofia’s coat.
He reached out with large, calloused hands—hands that had signed death warrants—and gently touched the edge of the damp wool blanket.
With agonizing slowness, he pulled the fabric back.
Inside the blanket lay a tiny infant girl, no more than two weeks old.
Her skin was a soft, healthy pink, her tiny chest rising and falling in shallow, rhythmic breaths.
A shock of fine dark hair curled against her forehead.
Her tiny fists were clenched tight against her chest, right over a tiny, unfinished yellow wool sweater.
Luca’s breath hitched.
For a long, agonizing moment, the fierce, unyielding mafia boss looked down at the tiny human being.
And the hard lines of his face seemed to dissolve into something devastatingly human.
“Is this...?” Luca whispered, his throat tightening.
“Her name is Elena,” Sofia wept, looking up into her brother’s dark eyes.
“Named after our grandmother.”
“I... I didn't want to come here, Luca.”
“I swear to God, I didn't.”
“But yesterday morning, men came to our apartment.”
“They turned off our electricity.”
“They broke our locks.”
“They told us our lease was terminated by Moretti Holdings.”
Luca’s head snapped up.
His obsidian eyes shifted slowly from his sister’s face across the foyer.
Locking onto the silver-haired figure of Victor Vance standing by the dining room archway.
“Moretti Holdings?” Luca’s voice was a lethal, quiet hiss.
“My company owns that apartment complex.”
“Who authorized an eviction on my sister?”
Victor swallowed hard.
Adjusting his tie with a hand that visibly shook.
“Mr. Moretti... company policy regarding delinquent accounts—”
“I asked you a question, Victor,” Luca rose slowly to his feet.
Towering over the attorney like an executioner stepping onto the scaffold.
“Who authorized it?”
Before Victor could stammer out an excuse, Vanessa stepped forward.
Her face flushed with desperate, reckless fury.
“I did!” Vanessa shouted, throwing her hands in the air.
“I authorized it!”
“Because your sister is a parasite, Luca!”
“She and her worthless husband drained your mother’s trust fund two years ago, and now they expect you to play doting uncle to a bastard child!”
“While we’re trying to merge our families and build an empire!”
“You’re marrying *me*, Luca! Not them!”
The foyer fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
From the dining room doorway, forty high-society guests stared in absolute horror.
Whispering behind their hands, watching the brutal unraveling of Chicago’s most powerful engagement party.
Luca turned around slowly.
He looked at the woman he had asked to be his wife three weeks ago.
He looked at the diamonds sparkling on her finger—diamonds he had personally selected in Antwerp.
Then, with agonizing slowness, Luca reached into his breast pocket.
He pulled out a small velvet box.
He didn't say a word.
He simply walked over to where Vanessa stood, opened the box, and dropped the multi-million-dollar engagement ring onto the hard marble floor at her feet.
It bounced twice before rolling to a stop against the toe of her red silk shoe.
“The engagement is off, Vanessa,” Luca said.
His voice entirely devoid of emotion.
May you like
“Get out of my house.”
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