Chapter 1 - The Red Velvet of Car Three
“You will kneel on those stones until every carriage leaves the gates, Elena.”
Camilla Vance sneered as she adjusted the emerald bracelet on her wrist.
The service corridor outside the private dining salon of Matteo Rossi’s Chicago fortress was freezing, chilled by the bitter December wind whistling through the ventilation grates.
Through the double oak doors, thirty syndicate underbosses were laughing over vintage scotch, celebrating Matteo’s formal alliance with the Vance pharmaceutical empire.
Elena Ward knelt on the damp flagstones, her knees screaming with agonizing pain, her small hands clutching a wet cleaning rag.
She was twenty-four years old, six months pregnant, and had worked sixteen hours straight without a single meal.
Her gambler husband had vanished into the Canadian wilderness three months ago, leaving behind forty thousand dollars in debt to local loan-shark syndicates.
She had taken the lowest scullery position at the fortress because she had no health insurance and was terrified of giving birth on the street.
Camilla had deliberately brushed her elbow against Elena’s serving cart as Elena passed through the service archway, sending a bowl of dark red wine reduction splashing across Camilla’s couture skirt.
“If you stand before sunrise, Elena,” Camilla had whispered with a cruel smile, “I will have my father’s enforcers track down your mother’s apartment in South Chicago.”
Elena had lowered her head and dropped to her knees.
She had endured the cold stone for three agonizing hours, scrubbing the stain until the lacquer was stripped bare.
Her lower back was cramping violently from the physical strain.
Tears blurred her vision as she whispered silent apologies to the baby kicking softly beneath her apron.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the private study swung open.
Matteo Rossi stepped out into the hallway.
Thirty-seven years old.
Known across the Midwest as the Iron Wolf—a ruthless don whose calm demeanor was far more terrifying than any shouting commander.
He was impeccably tailored in a bespoke midnight-black tuxedo with an open white collar, his sharp gray eyes scanning the corridor with cold, calculating precision.
He saw the cleaning bucket.
He saw the stripped wood.
And then he saw Elena kneeling on the floor, her rounded belly pressed against her knees as she struggled to breathe through a contraction.
Matteo stopped moving.
The temperature in the corridor seemed to plummet into freezing winter.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
His baritone was remarkably soft, yet it had the density of solid lead.
Elena tried to push herself up using the edge of the baseboard, but her trembling arms gave out, and she collapsed sideways against the wall.
Matteo cleared the distance between them in two long strides.
He dropped onto both knees on the floor beside her, his massive hands catching her shoulders before her head could strike the wainscoting.
“Elena.”
His voice was low, rough with an emotion none of his capos had ever heard.
“Look at me.”
Elena looked up, her face pale as ash, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rossi... Miss Vance told me I couldn't stand until the floor was clean...”
Before Matteo could answer, Camilla Vance glided into the hallway, a look of haughty amusement on her beautiful face.
“Matteo, darling! Why are you down there?” Camilla asked, waving her champagne flute dismissively. “That clumsy girl ruined my dress! I simply told her to clean up her mess!”
Matteo did not look at Camilla.
He wrapped his arm around Elena’s waist, gently lifting the pregnant girl from the floor and setting her into an antique velvet armchair nearby.
As he lifted her, the fraying seam of Elena’s left sleeve caught against his silver cufflink, tearing open the coarse cotton.
Something small, heavy, and metallic rolled from the lining of her sleeve, falling into Matteo’s palm.
An antique silver rosary with carved ebony beads and an engraved silver crucifix.
The private rosary of Matteo’s mother, Donna Isabella Rossi.
A rosary that had vanished twenty years ago when Isabella was murdered in her bed.
Matteo froze.
The air in the corridor seemed to stop moving completely.
He held the rosary up to the ambient light from the ballroom doors.
He saw the engraving on the back of the crucifix: To my beloved daughter, Maria — 1994.
Matteo’s jaw clenched so violently that the muscles along his neck stood out like iron cords.
He turned his terrifying, lethal gaze onto Elena’s pale, trembling face.
“Where did you get this rosary, Elena?” Matteo whispered, his voice trembling with an emotion none of his soldiers had ever seen.
Elena leaned weakly against his chest, her voice barely a whisper.
“My... my foster mother gave it to me on her deathbed, sir. She said she was Donna Isabella’s private nurse twenty years ago... and Donna Isabella gave her this rosary the night she died, telling her to hide me under an assumed name until you took the throne.”
Camilla Vance gasped in horror, taking two frantic steps backward as she clutched the stone balustrade.
Matteo slowly rose to his full, towering height, holding the silver rosary in his hand, his shadow completely engulfing his bride-to-be.
His gray eyes turned into black, bottomless voids of pure, calculated vengeance.
“My mother died of digitalis poisoning twenty years ago, Camilla,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper that cut through the silent corridor. “And your father’s pharmaceutical company was the sole distributor of digitalis in Chicago that year.”
He stepped closer to Camilla, his shadow swallowing her completely.
May you like
“And tonight, you and your father are going to learn what happens to people who try to destroy the women my family loves.”
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