Chapter 5 - Isabella’s Counterattack
Before I could cross the room back to Teresa, the heavy oak doors of the suite swung open with explosive force.
Isabella marched in.
She was dressed impeccably in an ivory wool trench coat with gold buttons, large designer sunglasses perched on top of her blown-out blonde hair, carrying a crocodile-skin Hermès Kelly bag. Behind her trailed Victor Cassano—a thickset, silver-haired man with cold, watery blue eyes and the broad shoulders of a retired dockyard enforcer who had traded brass knuckles for private equity portfolios.
Behind them stood three of the Moretti estate security guards.
“There she is,” Isabella announced, her voice dripping with triumphant venom. She pointed a manicured, emerald-ringed finger directly at me. “Step away from the dresser, girl.”
I froze, my hand clutching the amber bottle behind my back. “Miss Cassano?”
Teresa didn’t flinch. She sat taller in her chair, her gaze narrowing like an eagle locking onto prey. “Victor. What is the meaning of this intrusion into my private suite?”
Victor Cassano offered a tight, patronizing smile, taking a cigar out of his breast pocket before remembering whose presence he was in and sliding it back. “Forgive the disturbance, Teresa. But my daughter seems to have suffered a rather significant theft this morning, right under your roof.”
“A theft?” Teresa’s voice was arctic.
“My diamond tennis bracelet,” Isabella said, stepping forward, her eyes flashing with pure malice as she locked them onto me. “The four-carat Harry Winston piece my father gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday. I left it on my vanity in the west wing before breakfast. When I returned, it was gone.”
“And what does that have to do with Emma?” Teresa demanded.
“I saw her coming down the west hallway twenty minutes ago,” Isabella lied smoothly, not a single flicker of hesitation in her voice. “Hiding something under her apron. Given her... sudden accident yesterday, I imagine she’s feeling rather insecure about her continued employment. Perhaps she decided to secure a severance package before Luca wised up.”
“That’s absurd,” I said, my voice rising despite my terror. “I haven't set foot in the west wing all morning! I’ve been right here with Mrs. Moretti since eight o'clock!”
“Is that so?” Isabella sneered, crossing her arms. “Then why were your hands rummaging through Teresa’s private dresser just as we walked in? What are you hiding behind your back right now, Emma?”
The trap was so obvious, yet so brutally effective.
If I showed the prescription bottle, she would claim I was stealing narcotics. If I accused her of poisoning the pills in front of her father and three guards, it would be my word against the most powerful shipping heiress in Chicago.
“Dante,” Isabella barked at the senior security guard. “Search her apron. And then have two men search her room on the third floor.”
Dante hesitated, his eyes darting toward Teresa. In this house, Teresa Moretti outranked everyone except Luca.
“Nobody touches her,” Teresa said, her voice dropping into a register of absolute command. “Victor, reign your daughter in before I have my son throw both of you off my property.”
Victor Cassano’s smile faded into something far uglier. “With all due respect, Teresa, Luca is downstairs finalizing the shipping manifest for the Calumet River terminals with my attorneys. This family is about to merge fifty million dollars in assets. I will not have my daughter robbed by a charity-case orphan your son picked up from a county hospital.”
Victor stepped forward himself, reaching a thick, heavy hand toward my arm. “Hand over whatever is in your apron, little girl, or I’ll have the police here in ten minutes.”
“Touch her and you lose the hand, Victor.”
The voice didn't come from inside the room. It came from the open doorway.
The entire room seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.
Luca stood framed by the mahogany entrance. He had shed his suit jacket, wearing a charcoal dress shirt unbuttoned at the wrists, a sheaf of legal documents folded in his left hand. But it wasn't his clothes that stopped Victor Cassano dead in his tracks.
It was the look in his eyes.
It was the look of a predator that had just caught a rival wolf stepping into his den.
Beside Luca stood Marco—his personal enforcer, a lethal, quiet man whose scarred neck and cold eyes were legendary among Chicago’s underworld. Marco didn't say a word. He simply rested his hand against his lapel, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet.
Luca stepped into the room. The guards immediately parted, retreating two paces into the hallway.
“Luca, darling!” Isabella’s voice instantly shifted back to that honeyed, helpless cadence. She rushed toward him, her hands clasping his bicep. “Thank god you're here. This girl stole my Harry Winston bracelet. We caught her red-handed going through your mother's dresser!”
Luca looked down at Isabella’s hands on his arm.
He didn't pull away violently. He simply turned his arm until her grip was broken, stepping past her as if she were a piece of cheap furniture.
He walked straight toward me.
I stood there, trembling, clutching the amber prescription bottle and the single rogue peach pill in my sweaty palm.
Luca stopped twelve inches in front of me. His gaze dropped to my splinted right hand, then to my left hand clenched against my apron.
“What’s in your hand, Emma?” he asked.
The entire room held its breath. Isabella smirked from the doorway, her father watching with cold satisfaction.
I looked into Luca’s dark, fathomless eyes. There was no way out now. The truth was the only weapon I had left.
“It isn't a bracelet, Mr. Moretti,” I whispered.
I opened my left hand.
Lying in the center of my palm was the amber prescription bottle—and the oblong peach pill stamped *V-20*.
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“It’s your mother's heart medicine,” I said, my voice echoing off the high plaster ceiling. “Someone poisoned it.”
***
