Chapter 3 - The Scent of Cedar and Smoke
Waking up was a slow, disorienting crawl out of a deep ocean of cotton and pain.
I blinked against the soft, amber glow of an unfamiliar room. There was no water-stained ceiling like the one in my cramped studio apartment in Pilsen. There was no hum of the refrigerator that rattled every twenty minutes. Instead, the ceiling above me was vaulted, adorned with hand-carved mahogany beams and gold leaf trim. I was lying in a massive four-poster bed draped in Egyptian silk sheets that felt like spun water against my skin.
I tried to shift, but a sharp twinge in my left arm made me gasp.
“Be still.”
The voice was low, gravelly, and sat right beside me.
I turned my head. Luca Moretti was sitting in a high-backed leather armchair beside the bed. His formal tuxedo jacket was gone, his crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned at the throat and the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms crisscrossed with old, faded scars. His dark hair was messy, still damp from the rain, and his jaw was shadowed with dark stubble.
On the nightstand sat a half-empty glass of amber whiskey and a medical tray filled with silver surgical instruments, antiseptic, and discarded rolls of bloody gauze.
“Mr. Moretti…” I scrambled to sit up, pulling the heavy duvet over my collarbone. Underneath, someone had stripped me out of my bloodstained maid’s uniform and dressed me in an oversized, impossibly soft grey cashmere sweater that clearly belonged to Luca.
“Lie back down, Sophie. That is an order,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice. He stood up and stepped closer, gently pressing his hand against my right shoulder to ease me back into the mountain of pillows.
His hand was warm. The sheer physical presence of the man was overwhelming. In the three months I had worked as a maid in this palace, I had only ever seen him from a distance—walking through the corridors flanked by armed lieutenants, signing papers, or sitting at the head of a dining table that seated thirty people. To have him leaning over me, his dark eyes searching mine with intense focus, made my breath hitch in my throat.
“How is Mrs. Moretti?” I asked, my voice dry as parchment.
“Sleeping,” Luca replied. A shadow of profound relief crossed his features. “Dr. Chen pumped the sedatives out of her system. She’s resting under twenty-four-hour guard in the master suite across the hall. She woke up twenty minutes ago and the first thing she demanded was to know if her ‘brave little girl’ was going to survive.”
A weak smile pulled at my lips, but it faded quickly as I looked down at my left arm.
It was wrapped tightly in pristine white bandages from the knuckles of my hand all the way past my elbow.
“Dr. Chen had to put eighteen stitches into your forearm,” Luca said, his voice dropping into that dark, dangerous octave that signaled impending violence. “The steel latch of the service elevator tore through the muscle tissue. Another two inches and the cable would have severed your brachial artery. You could have bled to death in that hallway while my guests drank my champagne.”
“I couldn't let them take her,” I whispered, looking down at the silk covers. “Mrs. Moretti… she was the only person in this house who ever treated me like a human being. When my sister Emily got sick with chronic nephritis last month, your mother noticed I had been crying in the pantry. She gave me two hundred dollars out of her own purse and told me God tested the kindest souls first.”
Luca remained utterly still, listening to every syllable. “Your sister is sick?”
I nodded, feeling the familiar, suffocating knot of shame and terror tighten in my chest. “Emily is nineteen. Her treatments cost twelve hundred dollars a month. My wages here barely cover her medications after rent. That’s why… that’s why I couldn't lose this job, Mr. Moretti. I have forty-six dollars left in my checking account. If I get fired, Emily loses her dialysis slot on Tuesday.”
A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the room.
Luca turned away, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the sprawling, rain-soaked estate. Outside, armed guards with flashlights were sweeping the grounds with German Shepherds.
“When I was twelve years old,” Luca said quietly, staring out into the dark, “my father was murdered in front of me in our own driveway. A rival family bought off three of our household staff. People who had eaten at our table for ten years opened the front security gates for three hundred thousand dollars.”
He turned around to face me, his eyes burning like black coals.
“For twenty-seven years, I have lived under the assumption that every human being has a price. Loyalty, love, respect—I believed they were all commodities to be negotiated, bought, or enforced with a gun.” He walked back over to the bed, stopping right beside me. “And then tonight, a girl making twenty-two dollars an hour threw her body into the gears of a closing elevator to protect an old woman who had nothing left to offer her but kindness.”
He leaned down, placing both hands on the mattress on either side of my hips, trapping me in his intoxicating orbit.
“You bled for my blood, Sophie Bennett,” he whispered, his gaze dropping briefly to my lips before rising back to my eyes. “There is no debt in this world more sacred to a Moretti. Your sister’s medical bills are paid. Permanently. I had Marco wire half a million dollars to the Northwestern Memorial renal institute twenty minutes ago. The best specialists in the country are being flown in by private jet tomorrow morning.”
My jaw dropped. The room seemed to tilt on its axis. “What? No—Mr. Moretti, that’s… that’s impossible. I can’t accept that! That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars!”
“It is already done,” he said smoothly, refusing to budge. “And as for you… you are no longer a maid in this house.”
Panic spiked through my chest, cold and sharp. “You’re firing me?”
Luca let out a low, dark chuckle that vibrated straight through the mattress. “Fire you? Sophie, you are the most dangerous witness in the city right now. You know what Vanessa did. You know the Volkovs are involved. If you walk out those front gates, there are a dozen men who would gladly put a bullet in your head to keep you from testifying before the Syndicate Council.”
He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently catching my chin, lifting my face so I had no choice but to hold his gaze.
“From this moment forward, you reside in the family wing. You eat at my table. You walk under my guard. And until I tear the Bellini and Volkov families out by their roots, you belong to my inner circle.”
Before I could process the sheer magnitude of his words, the heavy oak doors of the bedroom were violently shoved open.
Marco stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his tactical vest smeared with mud.
May you like
“Boss,” Marco said tightly. “We have a problem in the cellar. Don Bellini just arrived at the front gate with ten armed vehicles. He’s demanding to see his daughter.”
***
