Chapter 6 - The Rossi Retaliation
By eight o’clock the following morning, the storm had moved from the sky into the financial district.
I sat in the estate’s sunny morning room on the second floor, a steaming mug of chamomile tea resting on the table beside me. The television mounted on the wall was muted, but the scrolling red banners at the bottom of the financial news network told the whole story:
**MORETTI INDUSTRIAL TERMINATES ROSSI SHIPPING ALLIANCE**
**ROSSI SHARES PLUMMET 14% AT OPENING BELL**
**RUMORS OF HIGH-PROFILE ENGAGEMENT SPLIT SHAKE ELITE CIRCLES**
A light tap on the door startled me. Marco stepped into the room, dressed in a crisp charcoal suit, his expression as unreadable as a slab of granite. He carried a silver tray with a plate of fresh fruit and toast, setting it down on the table beside my tea using only one hand.
“Mr. Moretti asked me to ensure you ate breakfast,” Marco said, his tone polite but formal. “He’s currently on a conference call with his board of directors.”
“Thank you, Marco,” I said quietly, feeling absurdly pampered. “You really don't have to wait on me. I can carry a plate with one hand.”
Marco allowed the faintest hint of a smile to touch the corner of his mouth. “Miss Emma, with all due respect, if the boss finds out I let you lift a finger today, he’ll reassign me to warehouse security in South America. Let me do my job.”
I let out a soft laugh, the tension in my chest loosening just a fraction. “Is everything… bad? With the business, I mean?”
Marco’s smile vanished, replaced by the grim vigilance of a soldier assessing a battlefield. “Vincent Rossi is bleeding money by the second. A man like that doesn’t take a financial beating quietly. He called three emergency meetings this morning with the city’s licensing board and the port authority. He’s trying to freeze Moretti cargo ships at the docks.”
“Can he do that?”
“He can try,” Marco replied calmly. “But he forgets who he’s dealing with. Luca built this empire from scratch. Vincent inherited his. There’s a big difference between a man who knows how to fight and a man who only knows how to write checks.”
Before Marco could say another word, Luca walked into the morning room.
He looked devastatingly sharp in a midnight-blue three-piece suit, his dark hair neatly styled, though the slight shadow of fatigue beneath his eyes betrayed how little he had slept. When he entered, the entire room seemed to rearrange itself around his gravity.
“Marco,” Luca said without looking at his security chief. “Leave us.”
“Yes, boss.” Marco nodded once and exited, closing the heavy oak doors quietly behind him.
Luca walked over to the table and pulled out the chair directly opposite mine. He sat down, unbuttoning his suit jacket, his eyes immediately dropping to my bandaged hand resting on the table.
“How is the pain this morning?” he asked.
“Much better,” I replied honestly. The throbbing had subsided into a dull, manageable ache thanks to the anti-inflammatory medication Dr. Miller had prescribed. “Luca… you shouldn't be here worrying about my breakfast. Look at the news. The Rossi family is going to war with you.”
Luca glanced dismissively at the television screen on the wall, then picked up the remote and clicked it off entirely. The room fell into peaceful quiet.
“Let them go to war,” Luca said evenly. “Vincent Rossi thinks he holds leverage over me because of the municipal shipping permits. He doesn't know that I purchased fifty-one percent of the holding company that owns his primary dry docks six months ago. By three o’clock this afternoon, I will initiate a hostile takeover of his logistics firm.”
My mouth fell open. “You already owned his docks?”
“I never enter an alliance without holding the keys to the exit,” Luca replied, a cold, calculating brilliance flashing in his dark eyes. “I was prepared to keep the peace for the sake of the merger. But the moment Isabella laid her hands on you, that peace ended.”
A strange, suffocating heat flared in my chest. “Luca, you keep saying that. But why? I’m just an employee. If word gets out that you destroyed a multi-million-dollar merger because of a maid, your investors will call you reckless.”
Luca leaned forward across the table, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that made the breath catch in my throat.
“You think you are just an employee to me?” he asked, his voice low, intimate, and dangerous.
I swallowed hard, suddenly acutely aware of how close he was. “I… that’s what I was hired as.”
“I hired seven nannies and three housekeepers before you came to this house, Emma,” Luca said, his words measured, deliberate, and stripping away every barrier between us. “Sofia screamed at every one of them. She locked herself in her room. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t speak. She was drowning in grief, and I was drowning right beside her because I didn't know how to save her.”
His hand reached across the table, his fingers gently covering my uninjured left hand. His skin was warm, electric, sending a cascade of tremors up my arm.
“Then you walked into this house,” he continued softly. “You didn't bow to me. You didn't fawn over my money like Isabella did. You sat on the floor with Sofia and built towers out of wooden blocks until she laughed for the first time in two years. You brought life back into a mausoleum.”
My eyes stung with tears. I tried to pull my hand back, frightened by the raw vulnerability in his voice, but his grip tightened gently, holding me fast.
“Do not diminish your worth in this house, Emma,” Luca murmured, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin of my wrist. “And never diminish your worth to me.”
Before I could find the voice to answer, a sharp chime sounded from the tablet resting in Luca’s jacket pocket.
He broke eye contact reluctantly, pulling the device from his coat. As he read the message on the screen, the warmth that had softened his features vanished instantly. The merciless, predatory tycoon returned in the blink of an eye.
“What is it?” I asked, fear instantly replacing the romantic tension.
Luca stood up, his jaw clenched tight. “Vincent Rossi didn't just go to the docks this morning. He sent two private investigators to the hospital where your mother is staying.”
The world tilted beneath my feet. A wave of ice crashed over my chest.
“My mother?” I gasped, rising to my feet so fast my chair nearly tipped over. “No. No, please—she has early-onset Alzheimer’s, Luca! She doesn't understand what’s happening! She gets terrified if strangers question her!”
Luca crossed the space between us in a single stride, catching my shoulders with his broad hands, steadying me as panic threatened to buckle my knees.
“Listen to me,” Luca commanded, his voice an anchor in the storm of my terror. “My security team was already stationed outside her wing. Marco intercepted them before they even reached her floor. They didn't touch her, Emma. They didn't even get past the lobby doors.”
Tears spilled over my cheeks, hot and bitter. “Vincent won't stop. He knows she’s my weakness. He’s going to use her to force me to drop the charges, to tell the press I lied about Isabella!”
Luca’s thumbs wiped the tears from my cheeks, his grip on my shoulders tightening with fierce, unyielding protection.
“Vincent Rossi made a fatal miscalculation,” Luca whispered, his eyes flashing with a terrifying, lethal darkness. “He thought going after your family would frighten you. All it did was sign his own destruction.”
Luca turned toward the door, raising his voice. “Marco!”
The security chief stepped into the room immediately, as if he had been waiting right outside the threshold. “Yes, boss?”
“Deploy the private transport unit to St. Jude’s Extended Care,” Luca ordered without hesitation. “Move Emma’s mother to the private medical wing here at the estate. Bring her primary physician and two dedicated nurses with her. She stays behind my gates, under my personal guard, starting today.”
I stared at him in utter disbelief. “Luca… bringing her here? To your home?”
Luca looked back at me, his eyes blazing with an unshakeable resolve.
May you like
“You and your mother are under my roof now, Emma,” Luca said, his voice echoing with absolute finality. “And anyone who tries to cross that gate will have to go through me first.”
***
