Chapter 2 - The Swiss Boarding School Brochure and the Diamond Ring Left in the Champagne Glass
Nobody at the twenty-eight-seat table moved.
Not the millionaire real estate developers.
Not the politicians.
Not even the waiters standing near the kitchen doors with silver trays balanced on their palms.
The crystal chandelier above us hummed faintly.
Noah's small hands were still wrapped around his father's lapel.
His sightless eyes were wide, turned up toward the man who meant the entire world to him.
"No," Luca said.
His voice wasn't loud.
It didn't echo off the marble walls.
Yet every single person in the dining room flinched as if a gunshot had gone off.
"No, Noah. I never promised her that. I would never make a promise like that as long as I breathe."
Noah let out a shaky breath.
"Are you sure, Daddy?"
"I swear it to you, buddy."
Luca kissed the top of his son's dark hair, then slowly stood up to his full height.
He didn't let go of Noah's shoulder.
Instead, he turned his dark, terrifyingly calm gaze toward Diane Foster.
"Mrs. Foster."
Diane nearly dropped her linen napkin.
"Yes, Mr. Moretti?"
"Explain what my son just said."
Diane looked toward Vanessa, whose face was now the color of chalk against her crimson silk dress.
"Mr. Moretti," Diane said, her voice shaking. "I swear to you, I had no idea you weren't informed. When Miss Bellini approached our board three weeks ago, she presented a residential placement proposal."
Luca's jaw tightened by a fraction of an inch.
"A residential placement."
"Yes, sir."
"Where?"
Diane reached down beside her chair, picked up an embossed leather portfolio, and pulled out a thick, glossy booklet with gold lettering on the cover.
She passed it up the table.
None of the guests wanted to touch it for more than a second, passing it hand to hand like a live grenade until it reached Luca.
He didn't open it.
He looked at me.
"Hannah."
I stepped forward, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Yes, Mr. Moretti?"
"Read the cover for me. I don't want to take my hands off my son."
I picked up the booklet from the white tablecloth.
My fingers were cold.
"It's the Institut Sonnenberg," I read aloud. "Located in Zurich, Switzerland. A full-time, year-round boarding facility for visually impaired youth."
Noah flinched at the word boarding.
He reached out with his free hand, searching blindly for my apron.
I stepped closer so his knuckles brushed the cotton fabric, and he immediately grabbed a fistful of it.
"Keep reading, Hannah," Luca said quietly. "Is there paperwork inside?"
I opened the front cover.
Clipped to the inside pocket was an enrollment contract.
My breath caught in my throat.
"Yes, sir. It's an admission agreement for the term starting next Monday."
"Next Monday," Luca repeated.
Two days after the wedding.
"And whose signature is on the guardian line?" he asked.
I looked down at the bottom of the third page.
There were two lines.
One said Vanessa Bellini-Moretti, Stepmother/Legal Co-Guardian.
The other had a familiar, sharp scrawl across it.
"Yours, sir," I whispered. "At least... it looks like yours. Dated ten days ago."
Luca didn't even blink.
"Ten days ago, I was in Boston meeting with pediatric ophthalmologists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. I wasn't in Chicago."
Diane Foster gasped, her hand flying to her pearl necklace.
"Miss Bellini told us you signed the forms in your study and that the foundation would co-sponsor the tuition as part of our international outreach program! She asked the donors here tonight to pledge two hundred thousand dollars toward the endowment in Noah's name—so he could be sent to Zurich immediately after the reception!"
A murmur of outrage rippled through the table.
An older man in a tuxedo near the middle stood up, his face red.
"Vanessa, you told my wife and me that Luca was heartbroken but felt the boy needed European specialists! You asked me for fifty thousand dollars this afternoon!"
Vanessa's shoulders hunched.
Tears smeared her heavy mascara, leaving black streaks down her cheeks.
"Luca, listen to me," she pleaded, rising halfway out of her chair. "You don't understand how hard it is! Everything in this house revolves around him! The furniture can't be moved. The lights have to be kept a certain way when he gets migraines. We can't travel spontaneously. We can't even host a dinner without everyone tiptoeing around his condition!"
Luca stared at her as if he were looking at a stranger who had broken into his home.
"His condition?"
"Yes!" she cried, losing the polished, sweet tone she had used for the last year. "We are getting married on Saturday! We're supposed to be starting our life! Do you really want to spend the next ten years counting footsteps and reading menus out loud? Zurich is the best school in the world! He would have been fine there!"
Noah pressed his face harder into his father's jacket.
"I don't speak German, Daddy," the little boy whispered, his voice muffled and terrified. "I don't know how many steps it is to the bathroom there. Please don't send me away."
Something inside my chest snapped.
I forgot I was the maid.
I forgot about Friday's bills.
I knelt right there on the marble floor beside Noah, wrapping my hand over his small fingers where they clutched his white cane.
"You aren't going anywhere, Noah," I told him fiercely. "Do you hear me? Your cane stays right by that door, your shoes stay in the mudroom, and tomorrow morning I'm making you blueberry pancakes with the chocolate chips in the shape of a smiley face so you can feel them with your fork."
Noah turned his wet face toward me.
"Promise, Miss Hannah?"
"I promise."
Above us, Vanessa let out a bitter, shrill laugh.
"Oh, look at the housekeeper playing saint! For God's sake, Luca, are you going to let a girl who scrubs your toilets dictate how you run your family? My father merged three shipping terminals with your brother last month! This marriage unites the Bellini and Moretti families! You aren't going to blow up a forty-million-dollar alliance over a boarding school brochure!"
The room went dead silent again.
Because everyone in Chicago knew who Marco Bellini was.
And everyone knew what Luca Moretti did when someone tried to threaten him with money.
Luca slowly reached into his inside jacket pocket.
He didn't pull out a weapon.
He pulled out his cell phone, tapped the screen twice, and put it on speaker.
It rang once.
"Boss?" a deep voice answered. It was Dante, Luca's head of security and right-hand man.
"Dante," Luca said, never taking his eyes off Vanessa. "Call the legal team. Tell them the terminal merger with Marco Bellini is terminated effective immediately. Pull our vessels from their docks by midnight."
Vanessa gasped, stumbling forward until her palms hit the table.
"Luca, no! My father will ruin you—"
"Your father," Luca interrupted softly, "was three months away from federal indictment before I bought his debt. If he calls me tonight, I'll hand his ledgers over to the U.S. Attorney myself."
He turned back to the phone.
"And Dante?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"Bring the security team to the main dining room. Escort Miss Bellini to the guest suite on the first floor while she collects her handbag. She is not to go upstairs near Noah's wing. Her things will be packed by the staff and delivered to her father's house by dawn."
"Understood."
Luca hung up.
Vanessa stood frozen, her chest heaving beneath the red silk.
"You're calling off the wedding?" she whispered. "Two days before the ceremony? With three hundred people flying into Chicago?"
Luca looked down at her left hand, where a four-carat emerald-cut diamond sat on her ring finger.
"Leave the ring on the table, Vanessa."
"Luca, please—"
"Leave it on the table, or I will have Diane Foster's videographer send the raw footage of what you did to my ten-year-old son tonight to every news station in Illinois before you reach the driveway."
The videographer quickly held up the small black camera, pulled out the SD card, and set it directly in front of Luca's water glass.
"It's all yours, Mr. Moretti," the man said quickly. "I don't want a dime."
Vanessa's hands shook violently as she tugged the diamond ring off her finger.
With a sharp, spiteful movement, she dropped it straight into her half-full glass of champagne.
It sank to the bottom with a tiny clink, bubbles rising around the stone.
Then she spun toward me, her eyes blazing with pure hatred.
"You think you won something tonight, Hannah?" she hissed. "You're a nobody. Wait until my father finds out who opened her mouth at this table. You won't be able to find a job cleaning gutters in this city."
Before I could flinch, Luca stepped directly between Vanessa and me.
His broad shoulders blocked her from my view entirely.
"If anyone in the Bellini family comes within five hundred feet of Hannah Brooks or her mother," Luca said, his voice dropping to a lethal register that made the hair on my arms stand up, "I won't call my lawyers, Vanessa. I'll handle it personally. Now get out of my house."
The double doors opened.
Dante and two six-foot-four security guards stepped inside.
Vanessa didn't wait for them to touch her.
She snatched her gold clutch off the table, lifted the hem of her red gown, and walked out of the dining room with her heels clicking frantically against the marble.
One by one, the twenty-eight guests stood up, murmuring quiet apologies to Luca before filing out into the foyer.
Diane Foster paused beside us, her eyes red.
"Mr. Moretti, our foundation will return every single pledge made under her name tonight. I am so deeply sorry."
Luca only gave a curt nod.
Within five minutes, the grand dining room was empty.
Half-eaten plates of filet mignon, melting chocolate cake, and twenty-eight crystal glasses sat under the blazing chandeliers.
And in the middle of it all were just the three of us.
Noah let go of his father's jacket and reached both arms toward me.
"Miss Hannah?"
"Right here, sweetheart."
"My knees hurt," he whispered. "From when I fell by the flowers."
I didn't ask permission.
I scooped the ten-year-old boy up into my arms—cane and all—and held him against my shoulder while he buried his face in my neck.
When I looked up, Luca Moretti was watching me.
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The cold, terrifying mafia boss who had just dismantled a forty-million-dollar empire in thirty seconds looked completely exhausted.
"Hannah," he said softly, his eyes dark and unreadable. "Don't go home tonight."
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