Chapter 2 - THE UNBROKEN VOW
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The silence inside the glass greenhouse was so heavy that even the falling mist sounded like shattering crystal.
Vanessa took two frantic steps backward, her designer heels catching against the wet stone floor.
Her chest rose and fell in jagged gasps as she stared at the trembling elderly woman.
"She is an old lunatic who belongs in an asylum, Luca!" Vanessa shrieked, pointing an acrylic fingernail at Eleanor.
Luca did not flinch, nor did he look away from the elderly widow.
His dark eyes seemed to turn into solid obsidian as the tension in the room thickened into pure ice.
"Step back, Vanessa," Luca said in a voice so quiet and dangerous that the hairs on my arms stood up.
I kept both of my hands firmly planted on Eleanor's frail shoulders, feeling every violent shiver running through her thin frame.
"Luca, please listen to me," Eleanor whimpered, her faded blue eyes shining with decades of unshed tears.
"Your mother knew she was dying of heart failure, but that was not her greatest agony."
"She watched your father sign away the blood of this family to men who wore tailored suits and carried venom in their veins."
Vanessa tried to lunge forward to grab the woman's arm, but Luca moved with lethal, effortless speed.
He stepped directly between his wife and the widow, his towering six-foot-three frame blocking Vanessa completely.
"If you lay a single finger on her, Vanessa, you will leave this estate in handcuffs or in a body bag," Luca warned without raising his tone.
"Are you threatening your own wife for a servant and a decrepit street beggar?" Vanessa hissed, her mask of sweet elegance cracking entirely.
"Eleanor Whitmore was my mother's dearest companion before you were even born," Luca replied cold as winter frost.
"And you just paid forty thousand dollars of my money to dig up the exact ground my mother forbade anyone to touch."
Luca reached into his tailored suit jacket and pulled out his private cell phone.
He tapped a single button on speed dial and brought the device to his ear.
"Marco, bring five trusted men to the private greenhouse right now," Luca commanded into the receiver.
"Bring steel shovels, floodlights, and heavy breaching tools."
Vanessa let out a strangled gasp, clutching her diamond necklace as if she were choking on her own breath.
"No! You can't do this! You have no right to tear up this floor based on the delusions of a senile trespasser!"
"This is my estate, bought with my blood and built on my family's legacy," Luca snapped, his jaw ticking violently.
I looked down at Eleanor, whose wrinkled hands were still clutching the shattered metal pieces of her vintage watering can.
"Mrs. Whitmore, take a deep breath," I whispered softly, gently wiping away a tear that had traced down her hollow cheek.
"You are safe here. Mr. Moretti will protect you."
Eleanor looked up into my eyes with profound sorrow and squeezed my wrist with surprising strength.
"It isn't me who needs protection, Claire," she whispered back, loud enough for Luca to hear.
"It is the truth that has been waiting in the dark for thirty long years."
Luca turned slowly toward the oldest rosebush, its pristine white petals glowing under the pale afternoon sun that filtered through the glass.
He had spent his entire adulthood believing his little brother, Julian, had drowned in Lake Michigan during an innocent summer storm.
He had visited an empty marble tomb every single year on the fourth of July.
He had watched his mother slowly waste away into an early grave from what the doctors called heartbreak.
Now, the dreadful reality was hanging in the air like an executioner's blade.
"Eleanor," Luca said, his voice dropping into a tender, broken cadence he had never shown to anyone in this house.
"Did my mother bury Julian beneath those flowers?"
Eleanor slowly shook her head, her silver curls trembling beneath her faded blue scarf.
"No, my darling boy."
"Maria did not bury a corpse down there."
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She pointed a frail, shaking finger at the damp earth beneath the roots.
"She buried the confession that will destroy the Moretti empire forever."
