Chapter 3 - The Dead Husband's Cipher
The master bedroom on the top floor of the Moretti estate had never been occupied by a maid before.
By 3:00 a.m., Mateo had moved Lily and me into the private suite directly across from his own room. Four guards carrying automatic weapons stood posted at the end of the hallway.
Lily lay nestled in the center of an enormous king-sized bed, clutching her blue stuffed rabbit, her breathing soft and even. I sat on the edge of the mattress, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, watching the rain beat against the arched stained-glass windows.
The handle turned.
Mateo stepped inside, carrying a crystal decanter of amber liquid and two small glasses. He had stripped off his suit jacket, rolling the sleeves of his white dress shirt up to his elbows, exposing thick, corded forearms marked with faded tactical scars.
He poured two fingers of scotch and handed a glass to me.
"Drink it," he said softly. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."
"I have," I said, taking a tiny sip. The liquid burned down my throat, firing heat back into my frozen chest. "Why are you putting us up here, Mateo? The staff is already talking. If Bianca finds out I’m sleeping in the family wing—"
"Bianca was driven back to her father's estate an hour ago," Mateo interrupted, taking a seat in the armchair opposite my bed. "Her presence in this house has been suspended indefinitely."
I gasped. "You broke the engagement?"
"Not yet. But she broke the rules of my household," he said coldly. "In my world, power without restraint is just wild blood. A woman who strikes a helpless child to feel powerful is weak. I do not marry weak women."
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, his intense dark eyes fixing on mine. "Tell me more about Julian’s notes."
I swallowed hard, setting my glass on the nightstand. "He had a small pocket notebook. He kept it hidden inside the lining of his leather jacket. He wrote down dates, numbers, and a specific initials pair—S.R."
Mateo’s posture went instantly rigid.
"S.R.," Mateo repeated, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched along his cheekbone. "Are you certain?"
"I saw the pages, Mateo. He showed them to me the night before he died. He was terrified. He said 'S.R.' stood for someone who had been sitting at the head of the Moretti table for twenty years."
"Silvio Rossi," Mateo murmured, the name dropping into the quiet room like a lead weight.
My breath caught in my throat. Silvio. The loyal consigliere. The man who had just urged Mateo to execute me or send me away.
"Silvio was my father's best friend," Mateo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark hollow. "He held me when my mother was buried. He helped me consolidate power when the Lucchesi family tried to burn our docks in 2022. He has been the pillar of this syndicate for three decades."
"And he’s been embezzling from you," I said softly. "Julian found the double entries in the municipal tax registries. Silvio was using ghost companies under my husband’s name to launder cartel money through the Moretti foundation. When Julian figured it out, Silvio had him run off the road. And when I showed up here as a maid two months ago..."
"Silvio realized the widow of the man he killed was sleeping under the same roof," Mateo finished the thought, his eyes flashing with lethal clarity. "He couldn't just kill you right away without drawing attention to your past. So he waited. He used Bianca’s vanity to create a scene, then planted the USB drive to make it look like you were a spy sent by your husband's old court connections."
"He set me up," I whispered, the full weight of the trap crushing down on me. "If you had believed the evidence, you would have shot me yourself."
Mateo stood up in one fluid movement. He walked over to the bed, stepping right to the edge until he was looking down at me. He reached down, taking my chin gently between his thumb and index finger, forcing me to look up into his face.
"I don't shoot innocent women, Clara," he said softly, his voice thick with a strange, fierce heat that made my heart hammer wildly against my ribs. "And I certainly don't let anyone touch what belongs in my house."
"I'm just a maid, Mateo," I breathed, my lips inches from his hand.
"Not anymore," Mateo growled softly, his thumb tracing the soft curve of my lower lip. "Starting tonight, you are the only person in this house I answer to."
May you like
Before I could process the words, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the hallway outside.
Gunfire snapped through the silence—short, sharp muffled bursts.
