Chapter 4 - The House of Paper
The silence that followed was absolute.
I forgot the throbbing agony in my shoulder. I forgot the seventy-nine dollars in my bank account, forgot the threat of eviction, forgot everything except the man standing behind that chair.
Luca did not move. He remained suspended over Vanessa, his fingers gripping the carved mahogany so tightly the wood gave a sharp, agonizing groan.
"Say that again," Luca said. The words were barely a breath, but they sliced through the room like shattered glass.
Vanessa opened her eyes, looking up at him with the desperate, vicious spite of a cornered predator. "You think you're a king, Luca? You think you own this city because the Moretti blood runs in your veins? You're a ghost. You're an orphan pulled out of a charity ward in Cook County Hospital!"
"Vanessa," Daniel warned from the door, his hand dropping to his weapon.
"Let her speak," Luca commanded, not breaking his gaze.
"Thirty-one years ago, your precious mother Maria couldn't carry a child to term," Vanessa sneered, her courage returning through the venom of her revelation. "She had three miscarriages in four years. Antonio was desperate. The Commission was already demanding that he designate a successor from his cousins in New York. If he didn't have an heir, the Moretti territory would have been divided up like scraps on a butcher's block."
She pointed a trembling, crimson-tipped finger at the photograph.
"That woman in the nurse’s uniform wasn't your mother's sister. Her name was Teresa Bellini. My father's younger sister."
My heart stopped.
I looked at the woman in the photograph. The delicate curve of her jaw, the soft brown eyes—they carried a faint, undeniable echo of Vanessa’s own aristocratic features, stripped of the malice and the makeup.
"Teresa was nineteen," Vanessa whispered, her lips curling into a cruel, triumphant smirk. "She was an unwed student at Loyola. She got pregnant by a mechanic on the West Side. In our family, an illegitimate child was a scandal that would have destroyed my grandfather's standing in the Church and the syndicate. So Antonio Moretti made a deal with my father."
Luca slowly straightened his spine, standing tall under the amber lamplight. His face was entirely devoid of expression, a mask of cold marble.
"Go on," Luca said.
"Antonio took the baby. He paid Teresa three million dollars to vanish to Europe and sign away every legal right. Maria faked her third trimester at the lake house in Geneva, and when you were brought home, Antonio presented you to the Five Families as his legitimate firstborn son."
Vanessa laughed, a high, mocking sound that echoed off the leather books.
"My father held that secret for thirty years, Luca. He let your father build the empire. He let you sit on the throne. But he kept the hospital intake logs, the original birth certificate, and Teresa’s sworn statement in our vault on LaSalle Street. That was why this marriage was arranged. You weren't marrying me to form an alliance. You were marrying me because if you didn't, my father was going to walk into the Commission’s tribunal on Monday morning and prove that Luca Moretti has no claim to the Moretti throne."
She leaned back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest, looking up at him with smug, venomous satisfaction.
"You're a Bellini bastard, Luca. You're my cousin. And the second you break this engagement, every captain in this city will have the legal right under syndicate law to put a bullet through your head and take your territory."
The room was suffocating. I gripped the armrest of my chair, my knuckles white, terrified to breathe.
Luca looked down at the photograph on the desk. He picked it up once more, his thumb tracing the tiny crescent-shaped birthmark beneath the baby's left eye.
Then, he turned to Daniel.
"Daniel."
"Yes, boss."
"Take Miss Bellini to the wine cellar in the sub-basement. Strip her of her jewelry. Lock the iron gate, cut the power to the elevator, and post four armed guards outside the door."
Vanessa’s smug smile vanished in a fraction of a second. She scrambled out of the chair, her red dress tangling around her legs. "What? Luca, did you hear what I just said? If my father doesn't hear from me by midnight, he releases the files!"
Luca didn't look at her. He walked around the desk, opened his private humidor, and selected a dark cigar, rolling it between his fingers.
"Your father won't release anything, Vanessa," Luca said, his voice flat and terrifyingly steady. "Because your father doesn't know that my mother kept her own records."
He struck a wooden match, the sulfur scent filling the quiet room.
"Get her out of my sight," Luca ordered.
Daniel didn't hesitate. He grabbed Vanessa by the upper arm, hauling her toward the door. She screamed, thrashing against his grip, her bare feet kicking at the doorframe as she was dragged out into the hallway, her curses echoing down the marble gallery until the heavy oak doors clicked shut.
Silence returned.
Luca took a slow pull from his cigar, blowing a thin ribbon of blue smoke toward the high ceiling.
Then, he turned his gray eyes to me.
"Claire."
"Yes, Mr. Moretti?"
"Can you write with your right hand?"
I blinked, taken aback. "I... yes, sir. I'm right-handed."
May you like
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a heavy gold fountain pen, and set it on the leather blotter beside a clean sheet of cream-colored stationery.
"Good," Luca said softly, his voice dropping into that deep, intimate timber that made my pulse race. "Because you and I are about to rewrite the history of this city."
