Chapter 2 - The Severed Ring
The silence inside the west sitting room felt like the drop of a guillotine.
Bianca took two sharp steps toward Luca, her emerald silk gown rustling like dry grass in winter. Her manicure was immaculate, her diamond earrings catching the lamplight. “Luca, listen to reason. She’s an employee. A domestic worker with zero references whom you hired out of pity from that shelter six months ago. Sophia found the financial sheets under her mattress!”
“Shut up, Bianca,” Luca said.
He hadn’t raised his voice. That was what made Sophia Bell retreat until her back hit the wainscoting.
Luca turned to Emma. She had stood up, though her legs were visibly trembling. Her simple grey linen uniform was torn at the collar, exposing the pale hollow of her collarbone, but she held her spine completely straight. Her grey eyes were clear, steady, and blazing with something that looked remarkably like defiance.
“Look at me, Emma,” Luca murmured.
She did. Her pulse fluttered in the hollow of her throat, yet she did not blink. “I did not touch your acquisition papers, Mr. Moretti.”
“I know,” Luca said.
Bianca’s breath hitched in outrage. “You *know*? Based on what? Her pretty, pathetic face?”
Luca turned his head slowly. The coldness in his dark eyes could have frozen open water. “Based on the fact that the Bennett acquisition memorandum has not left my private vault since three o’clock this morning. It never sat on my desk.”
A suffocating pause descended on the room.
Bianca’s lips parted, the color draining from her cheeks in a sudden, violent wave. “What?”
“The folder that sat on my desk in the study,” Luca continued, his voice dropping into that quiet, lethal cadence known throughout the five boroughs, “was a decoy filled with obsolete port authority manifests from 2018. I planted it there before I left for Manhattan because I knew someone inside this house was siphoning information to your father.”
Sophia let out a tiny, choked sound.
“You set a trap,” Bianca whispered, her voice cracking.
“I set a trap for a rat,” Luca corrected. “What I did not expect was to come home and find my future wife playing the butcher in my drawing room.”
He stepped closer to Bianca. Even in her four-inch designer heels, she had to crane her neck to meet his gaze. Luca Moretti was an imposing presence—broad-shouldered, scarred along his left jawline from a knife fight on the Brooklyn docks fifteen years ago, and radiating the absolute authority of a man who commanded an army of three thousand men across three states.
“Give it to me,” Luca said softly.
Bianca swallowed hard. “Give you what?”
“The ring.”
“Luca—no! You can’t do this! The alliance between the Romano family and the Morettis is worth fifty million in transit rights alone! My father will—”
“Your father will bury his head in the sand and pray I do not send two hundred armed soldiers to burn down his terminal in Jersey City,” Luca cut in without a shred of hesitation. “Take it off. Before I have my men take it off your finger for you.”
Tears of rage, not sorrow, welled in Bianca’s eyes. Her hands shook as she wrenched the eight-carat emerald-cut diamond from her left ring finger. It had cost half a million dollars, chosen by his advisors to cement an arranged union meant to bring peace to the northern territories.
She held it out, her jaw trembling with fury.
Luca didn't take it in his palm. He simply looked at it, then let his gaze flick down to the antique Persian rug. “Drop it.”
“Luca—”
“Drop it on the floor, Bianca.”
Humiliated, tears spilling down her foundation, Bianca let the platinum band slip from her fingers. It hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud.
“Pack your belongings,” Luca told her. “You have twenty minutes before Marco escorts you to the gate. If you or Sophia Bell are still on Moretti land when the clock strikes seven, you will leave in the back of an ambulance.”
Sophia didn't wait for a second warning. She dropped the leather riding crop, scrambled toward the double doors, and practically sprinted down the gallery hallway. Bianca stood her ground for three seconds more, glaring with venomous hatred first at Luca, and then directly at Emma.
“You’re a dead woman,” Bianca hissed at the maid. “You hear me? You’re dead.”
“Get out,” Luca ordered.
Bianca spun on her heel and stormed out, her heels clicking frantically against the hardwood corridor until her footsteps faded into the cavernous mansion.
The room fell into absolute stillness.
Luca did not immediately turn around. He stood listening until he heard Marco’s booming voice in the foyer downstairs, barking orders for the Romano woman’s luggage to be loaded into an unmarked town car.
Only then did he exhale, turning back toward Emma.
She had rested one hand against the mahogany sideboard to steady herself. Her wrists were ringed with raw, crimson rope burns, and the bruise along her forearm was already darkening into an angry purple.
“Can you walk?” Luca asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.” He reached out, his large, calloused fingers gently wrapping around her elbow to support her weight. She flinched instinctively at the contact, but when she realized how carefully he was holding her, her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To the main suite. Dr. Valenti is on his way.”
Emma pulled back slightly, her eyes widening with genuine alarm. “No. Mr. Moretti, the staff quarters are in the east wing. If the others see you taking me upstairs to your private rooms, it will cause rumors. It will make things dangerous.”
Luca looked down at her, his jaw set in stone. “Emma, the woman who was supposed to be the mistress of this house just tied you to a chair and beat you because you know something she doesn’t want me to find out. We are well past worrying about household gossip.”
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He didn't give her a chance to argue further. Lifting her easily into his arms before she could protest, Luca ignored her quiet gasp and carried her out of the bloodied sitting room, leaving the multi-million-dollar engagement ring lying discarded in the dust behind them.
***
