Chapter 14 - The Hunt for Olivia
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It was nearly midnight when Marco returned to the estate.
The legal victory downtown had been absolute: every charge against Daniel had been formally expunged from the state records, and the remaining assets of the Moretti syndicate had been permanently frozen by the Department of Justice.
The Bellini name was clean.
Marco walked through the grand front doors, loosening his tie, his heart lighter than it had been in two years.
All he wanted was to find Olivia, pull her into his arms, and tell her that the war was finally over.
He climbed the stairs to the guest wing, his footsteps quiet on the runner rug.
He tapped softly on her bedroom door.
“Olivia?” he called out.
Silence answered.
He turned the brass handle and pushed the door open.
The room was immaculate.
The bed was neatly made.
On the vanity table, untouched, sat the diamond necklace and velvet jewelry boxes he had purchased for her that afternoon.
The closet doors hung open, revealing all the expensive dresses still hanging on their velvet hangers.
Marco’s stomach dropped like a lead weight.
He sprinted down the hallway toward his private study, throwing the double doors open with a bang that echoed through the empty floor.
His eyes landed on the single white envelope resting beneath his silver pen.
Daniel rushed into the study a moment later, alarmed by the noise.
“Marco?
What happened?”
Marco didn't answer.
His hands were shaking violently as he tore the envelope open.
He read the letter in ten seconds, his face draining of all color, his chest heaving as if he had just been struck by a freight train.
“The debt between us is settled.”
“I am not a queen.”
“Damn it!” Marco roared, sweeping his arm across the desk in a blind fury, sending heavy crystal paperweights, ink bottles, and legal briefs crashing against the opposite wall.
“Marco!
Talk to me!” Daniel shouted, grabbing his brother’s shoulders.
“She left,” Marco choked out, his voice cracking with an agonizing panic that Daniel had never seen in him, not even when their father died.
“She thinks I was being kind out of obligation.
She thinks this was all about a debt.”
Aunt Helen appeared in the doorway, leaning on her walking stick, her eyes filled with gentle, knowing sorrow.
“She loves you, Marco,” Helen said softly into the devastated room.
“And because she loves you, she thinks she doesn't belong in your world.
She thinks staying with you would drag you down.”
Marco ran his hands through his hair, pacing the rug like a caged beast.
“She doesn't belong in my world?” Marco raged, his voice vibrating with raw, unfiltered desperation.
“She is the only good thing that has ever touched my world!
Without her, this house is just a mausoleum full of blood and ghosts!”
He stopped pacing and pulled his phone from his coat pocket, dialing his chief of security with trembling fingers.
“Listen to me carefully,” Marco barked into the receiver, his voice cutting through the house like a whip.
“Mobilize every vehicle we have.
Call the transit authority, check every bus depot, train terminal, and taxi dispatch in the tri-state area.
Search every block of South Philadelphia.”
“Marco, calm down,” Daniel said, stepping in front of him.
“She went to her father’s house.
You know she did.”
Marco lowered the phone, his dark eyes burning with an obsessive, immovable purpose.
“Get the car, Daniel,” Marco commanded, grabbing his heavy wool coat from the back of the chair.
“I am not sleeping until she is back in this house where she belongs.”
Thirty minutes later, three black SUVs tore through the quiet, snow-dusted streets of South Philadelphia, their headlights slicing through the predawn darkness.
Marco sat in the back of the lead vehicle, staring at the crumpled piece of paper in his fist.
I am not a queen, she had written.
Marco smiled a dark, fierce smile through his exhaustion.
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“You're wrong, Olivia Carter,” he whispered against the cold glass of the window.
“You've been the queen of this family since the moment you put your coat around my mother’s best friend.”
