Chapter 8 - The Society Gala Ambush and the Stolen Deeds
================================================================================
The interior of the Moretti mansion was cavernous and ghostly.
The catering staff had cleared the grand dining hall, leaving only the pristine white tablecloths and the scent of wilting Ecuadorian roses behind. Luca led me up the back servant staircase—not because he wanted to hide me, but because the central elevator was undergoing a security lockdown ordered by his technicians.
He brought me into his personal living quarters on the third floor, an expansive suite paneled in dark walnut, lined with thousands of leather-bound books, and warmed by a roaring stone fireplace that crackled with dry birch logs.
“Sit,” Luca commanded gently, pointing to a deep burgundy leather armchair positioned directly before the hearth.
He walked into his private dressing room and returned a minute later holding a thick, slate-gray cashmere sweater and a pair of soft flannel lounge pants.
“Go change in the guest bath through that door,” he said, handing the clothes to me. “Your maid uniform is soaked through. If you catch pneumonia, I won't have my star witness for the federal prosecutors tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mr. Moretti,” I murmured, ducking into the marble bathroom.
The warmth of the room embraced me. I stripped out of the wet, heavy uniform that Vanessa Bellini had looked down upon with such disgust. I pulled the cashmere sweater over my head. It was impossibly soft, carrying Luca’s signature fragrance of cedarwood, amber, and rain. The sleeves hung past my fingertips, and the trousers pooled around my ankles, but for the first time in hours, my body stopped trembling from the bone-deep chill.
When I stepped back into the library, Luca had poured two mugs of steaming black tea spiked with a measure of aged honey and lemon. He had also changed into a fresh charcoal Henley shirt and dark trousers, his wet hair combed back carelessly from his forehead.
He handed me a mug. “Drink it. It will help with the shock.”
I took the warm ceramic cup between both hands, letting the steam warm my face, and took a sip. The sweet, soothing heat spread instantly through my chest.
Luca sat opposite me, opening a military-grade rugged laptop on a low coffee table between our chairs. Beside the keyboard lay the titanium flash drive with the Bellini crest that I had recovered from the mud behind the shelter.
He inserted the drive into an isolated air-gapped port.
The screen lit up with scrolling lines of encrypted hex code. Luca pressed a few keys, bypassing initial firewalls, and unlocked the internal directories.
His gray eyes hardened as folder after folder populated the display.
“My God,” Luca muttered, leaning closer to the glowing screen. “It’s far worse than I imagined.”
“What is it?” I asked, leaning forward on the edge of the armchair.
“It’s not just offshore bank routing codes,” Luca said, his voice turning cold. “Arthur Bellini has been blackmailing half the state legislature using illegal surveillance footage captured at private private-club retreats in Lake Geneva. But look at this folder here, dated three months ago.”
He clicked open a document titled *‘Moretti Maritime Infrastructure - Port Access Handover.’*
My breath hitched as I read the summary lines over his shoulder.
“They were planning to use our deep-water port terminals in Calumet Harbor to offload undocumented shipping containers,” Luca said, anger simmering beneath his voice. “Contraband weapons, unregulated chemical shipments, and high-value narcotics smuggled in from South America. They knew my family has spent the last ten years transitioning completely into legitimate logistics and legal shipping. Bellini intended to frame my transport company for federal trafficking charges while Vanessa drained the charitable accounts.”
“They wanted to destroy you,” I whispered, horrified. “They didn't just want your money. They wanted you behind bars or dead.”
“If I was convicted of federal treason or racketeering,” Luca explained coldly, “the marriage contract Vanessa pushed me to sign would have given her sole conservatorship over every single Moretti asset in North America. Arthur would have controlled the port terminals, and Vanessa would have sat on a four-billion-dollar empire while I spent the rest of my life in a supermax prison cell in Colorado.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sheer magnitude of the betrayal settle in the air.
Suddenly, a violent crash of shattering glass echoed from the far end of the third-floor corridor!
The sound was followed immediately by the dull *thud* of a heavy object striking the hardwood floor, followed by the deafening wail of the estate’s perimeter security alarms!
Luca moved with terrifying speed.
In a fraction of a second, his handgun was in his palm, and he was on his feet, pulling me down behind the heavy mahogany desk.
“Stay low! Don't move!” he hissed.
The master suite doors were kicked open. Matteo came barreling inside, accompanied by two armed security guards wearing tactical vests and carrying assault carbines.
“Clear!” Matteo barked, sweeping the room before lowering his weapon. “Boss! You alright?”
“What was that?” Luca asked, stepping out from behind the desk, his gun still raised in low-ready position.
“A projectile through the second-floor library window,” Matteo said, breathing heavily. “A heavy steel bolt launched from a high-powered crossbow from the tree line beyond the eastern perimeter wall. The shooter escaped on a black dirt bike before our guards could corner him in the woods.”
“What did the bolt carry?” Luca demanded.
Matteo reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag containing a torn piece of soaked white linen, smeared with thick crimson paint—or blood.
Luca took the bag under the light of the desk lamp.
Written across the cloth in jagged, dripping red letters was a single sentence:
*“RETURN THE TITANIUM KEY BEFORE DAWN, LUCA, OR YOUR MOTHER’S GRAVE ISN’T THE ONLY ONE WE DIG IN THE WOODS. THE MAID DIES FIRST.”*
Luca’s knuckles cracked as he balled his hand into a fist, crushing the evidence bag. The look on his face was no longer that of a civilized businessman. The dark, ancient mafia heritage of the Moretti bloodline flared to life in his eyes—a terrifying, unholy wrath that promised absolute ruin to whoever dared threaten his house.
He turned his head slowly toward me.
I was trembling, staring at the bloody message. They knew about me. The Bellinis knew that a housemaid had ruined their multi-million-dollar conspiracy, and now I had a target painted directly on my back.
Luca knelt down before me, placing his large hands over my trembling shoulders. He looked directly into my terrified eyes, his voice steady, deep, and unbreakable.
“Listen to me, Natalie,” Luca said with absolute certainty. “Nobody is going to hurt you. Not Arthur Bellini, not his hired thugs, not anyone in this city. You put your life on the line to feed forty hungry children tonight. Now, I am putting my entire army between you and the people who want to harm you. As long as breath remains in my body, no one touches a single hair on your head.”
He looked up at Matteo, his voice turning into an icy decree of total war.
May you like
“Matteo. Mobilize every crew from Bridgeport to the North Docks. We are no longer waiting for the ten o’clock meeting with the prosecutors. We take the fight to Arthur Bellini tonight.”
================================================================================
Related Stories
