Chapter 7 - The Sins of the Fathers
The study on the second floor was tomb-like.
Outside, the storm had finally broken, leaving behind a thick, suffocating fog that pressed against the bay windows like a shroud.
Luca poured two fingers of amber liquid into a tumbler and placed it on the desk in front of me. He didn't sit. He leaned against the edge of the mahogany desk, crossing his arms, watching me with the terrifying patience of a tiger studying wounded prey.
“Drink,” he said.
My hands shook so violently the crystal rattled against the wood. I took a sip. The bourbon burned down my throat, but it couldn't thaw the ice in my veins.
“Ten years ago,” Luca began, his voice dangerously even, “my younger brother, Julian, was ambushed outside a warehouse in Detroit. He was twenty-one years old. Someone gave the rival syndicate the exact route of his convoy. Julian took three bullets to the chest.”
A tear slid down my cheek. I stared down at the floor, unable to meet his gaze.
“The man who leaked that route was named Arthur Vance—Isabella’s uncle,” Luca continued. “Arthur didn't act alone. He had an accountant who laundered the payment and forged the shipping manifests that lured Julian into that alley.”
Luca reached into his pocket and placed an old, folded newspaper clipping onto the desk.
The headline was yellowed with age: *ACCOUNTANT FOUND DEAD IN SUSPECTED SUICIDE AFTER MOB FALLOUT.*
Below the headline was a photograph of a middle-aged man with kind, tired eyes, holding the hand of a teenage girl with chestnut hair.
My father.
“Arthur Vance framed my father,” I choked out, the words tearing from my throat like broken glass. “My father was an honest accountant, Mr. Moretti! He found the missing money in Arthur’s books. He threatened to go to the police. So Arthur murdered him, forged a suicide note, and planted the documents to make it look like my father was the rat!”
Luca remained completely motionless. “And you?”
“I was seventeen!” I sobbed, looking up at him, desperate for him to see the truth in my eyes. “I had nothing! They took our house, our savings, our name! I lived in shelters. I worked three jobs. I changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name just so people wouldn't spit on me on the street!”
“Why did you come to this house, Emma?” Luca asked, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. “Did you come here for revenge? Did you seek out my son to use him as leverage against the Moretti family?”
“No!” I cried, slamming my good hand against the desk. “I didn't even know you were Julian’s brother until I saw the portrait in the gallery on my second week! I applied through an anonymous agency! I needed the money, and Mateo... Mateo needed someone who actually cared about him!”
I stood up, backing toward the door, my chest heaving with ragged breaths.
“If you think I’m a threat, kill me,” I whispered, tears blurring my vision. “Shoot me right now. But don't you dare look at me like I would ever hurt that little boy. I would take a bullet for Mateo! I proved that tonight!”
Luca didn't move.
The silence stretched between us, so intense I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
Then, Luca pushed off the desk and walked slowly toward me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact, bracing for the cold steel of a gun against my temple.
Instead, warm, rough hands gently cupped my cheeks.
I gasped, my eyes flying open.
Luca stood right in front of me. His thumb swept across my cheekbone, wiping away a fallen tear with impossible tenderness.
“I know your father didn't kill Julian,” Luca murmured softly.
I froze. “What?”
“I found out three years ago,” Luca said, his gaze searching my face. “I hunted down the men who set the ambush. Before Arthur Vance died, he confessed everything. He told me he murdered an innocent accountant named Thomas Hayes to cover his tracks.”
My breath caught in my throat. “You... you knew?”
“I’ve been looking for Thomas Hayes’s daughter for three years, Emma,” Luca whispered, his fingers tangling into the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me gently closer. “I wanted to make restitution. I wanted to give her the life her father was robbed of.”
He paused, his voice trembling slightly—the first crack of vulnerability I had ever heard in the feared crime lord.
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“I just didn't expect her to walk through my front door... and save everything I love.”
***
