“TAKE YOUR LITTLE GIRL AND GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A MAID!” THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE SCREAMED

The dining hall was so quiet you could hear the wax dripping down the sterling silver candelabras. Thirty of Chicago’s most ruthless, wealthy elites sat frozen in their seats, forks suspended, champagne glasses halfway to their lips.

Luca held our four-year-old daughter against his broad, suited chest. Grace’s small fingers were knotted into the lapel of his tailored jacket, right beside the discreet silk-stitched crest of the Moretti family.

Her voice, when she whispered, wasn’t loud. But in that dead silence, it carried like a gunshot.

"Daddy..." Grace whimpered, her tiny arm extending, pointing a trembling finger toward the head of the table. "That lady told Mommy in the kitchen earlier... she said if we didn't disappear tonight, she would put Mommy in the dark water where the fish sleep."

The air left the room in a single, collective gasp.

Luca didn't move immediately. He didn't yell. That was the most terrifying thing about Luca Moretti. When he was irritated, he raised his voice. When he was furious, he barked orders. But when he was ready to kill, he became as silent as a tomb.

Slowly, his dark eyes shifted from Grace’s tear-stained face to the woman sitting at the end of the long mahogany table.

Elena Moretti. His mother.

The matriarch of the Moretti empire sat straight-backed in her charcoal Chanel dress, diamonds sparkling at her throat. Her face was an immaculate porcelain mask of high-society indifference, but I saw the slight, almost imperceptible twitch in her left eyelid.

"Luca, darling," Elena said, her voice smooth as melted ice. "You cannot possibly take the ramblings of an exhausted child seriously. The girl is overwhelmed. Look at her—she’s half-starved, and her mother clearly coached her to create a scene."

"Coached her?" Luca’s voice was dangerously low. It vibrated through the floorboards.

Vanessa stepped forward, her red silk gown swishing violently against the carpet. "Luca! This is absurd! Look at this woman! She’s wearing a servant's uniform. She walked in off the street three weeks ago through an agency! If she were your wife, why on earth would she be cleaning our bathrooms?"

Luca didn't even look at Vanessa. He kept his eyes locked on his mother.

"Everyone," Luca said quietly.

Nobody moved.

"Out."

The word dropped like an executioner’s axe.

Within five seconds, chairs were scraping back in sheer panic. The thirty socialites, judges, city councilmen, and syndicate lieutenants didn't wait to grab their coats. They muttered hurried apologies, averted their eyes, and practically trampled one another to reach the grand foyer. In less than two minutes, the grand double doors clicked shut behind the last fleeing guest, leaving only the five of us in the echoing cavern of the dining room.

Four Morettis. And Vanessa Bellini.

"Emily," Luca said, his voice instantly softening as he turned his gaze to me. The murderous ice in his eyes melted into something raw, broken, and agonizingly vulnerable. "Look at me."

I couldn't. I kept my head down, staring at my worn black service shoes, my hands shaking so hard against my apron that the fabric rustled. "You shouldn't have said anything, Luca. I was just leaving. I only took the job because Grace needed medicine and the clinic wouldn't take my insurance. I didn't know you bought this estate. I swear I didn't know."

"Emily, stop," he choked out.

He closed the distance between us in three long strides. Grace rested securely in the crook of his left arm, looking down at me with wide, worried eyes. With his free hand, Luca reached out and cupped my cheek.

His palm was warm. Calloused. Familiar. The scent of him—expensive sandalwood, cedar, and rain—flooded my senses, ripping open five years of carefully buried grief.

"Look at me," he commanded softly, his thumb gently tracing the tear track on my cheek.

I looked up.

There were tears shining in the eyes of the most feared Don in the Midwest.

"They told me you were dead," he whispered, his voice cracking down the middle. "Five years ago, Emily. My mother came to me with photos of a car crushed beneath a semi-truck on Interstate 80. Burned beyond recognition. Dental records forged. She told me you ran because you hated this life. She told me the fire took you both."

My breath caught in my throat. I felt all the blood drain from my head. "What?"

I whirled around to look at Elena.

The older woman didn't flinch. She picked up her crystal water goblet and took a slow, calculated sip. "You were a distraction, Luca. You were twenty-nine years old, on the verge of taking your father's throne, and you were playing house with the daughter of a diner waitress. You refused to secure the Bellini alliance. You were going to ruin this family for sentimentality."

"You told me Luca sent you!" I screamed at her, the five years of agony, hunger, and loneliness exploding out of my chest. "Two of your men came into our apartment while he was in New York! They held a gun to my stomach! They showed me a paper signed by Luca disowning our marriage, and they told me if I didn't get on a bus to Iowa with fifty dollars in my pocket, they would make sure Grace never drew breath!"

Luca went entirely rigid.

The air in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees.

He slowly lowered Grace to the ground, crouching to meet her eye level. "Grace, baby. Look at me."

Grace looked at him, her lower lip trembling. "Are you really my daddy?"

"I am," Luca said, his voice thick with emotion. "I am your daddy, and no one is ever going to scare you again. Do you understand me? Never again." He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then glanced over his shoulder. "Marco!"

From the shadows near the doorway, a towering man in a charcoal suit stepped forward. Marco was Luca’s chief enforcer, a man who had served the family for two decades. His eyes were wide with shock at what he had just witnessed.

"Take Grace to the library," Luca ordered, not looking back. "Have Mrs. Higgins make her pancakes, strawberries, chocolate milk—whatever she wants. Double the security on the library doors. No one goes in except you."

"Yes, Boss." Marco gently extended his massive, scarred hand toward Grace. "Come on, little princess. Let's get you something good to eat."

Grace looked at me nervously.

"Go with him, sweetheart," I whispered, kneeling to kiss her cheek. "Mommy will be right here."

Grace nodded and took Marco's hand. As the heavy doors shut behind them, the silence returned—heavier, darker, and suffocating.

Luca stood up slowly, rolling his shoulders back. He reached up, untied his silk tie, and let it drop to the floor. Then, he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt, revealing the black ink of a crowned lion tattooed across his throat.

"Vanessa," Luca said, his voice flat.

Vanessa jumped. "Luca, I swear to God I didn't know! Elena told me she was dead! Elena set up our engagement!"

"You fired my wife," Luca said, stepping toward her. "You called the mother of my child a servant. You refused to let my hungry daughter eat a piece of bread at my table."

"I thought she was a maid!" Vanessa shrieked, backing away until her hips hit the sideboard. "Luca, our families signed a contract! My father controls the shipping docks! You can't just throw me out over a ghost from your past!"

"Watch me," Luca said. He reached into his inner jacket pocket, pulled out a gold signet ring with the Bellini crest—the engagement ring he had apparently carried for their formal announcement—and dropped it into a silver bowl of cold soup on the table. "Get out of my house. If you are on Moretti land when the sun rises, Marco will escort you off in a body bag."

Vanessa turned an ugly shade of gray. She shot me a look of pure, venomous hatred, gathered her red skirts, and bolted from the room.

Now, only Elena remained.

Elena set her glass down. She didn't look afraid. She was a woman who had survived fifty years in the Chicago mafia; she believed her blood protected her.

"You think you're being noble, Luca," Elena said coolly. "You think you're choosing love. But the Bellinis will go to war. The Commission will see this as weakness. You will lose everything your father built, all for a girl who smells of cheap floor wax."

Luca walked slowly to the head of the table. He placed both hands flat on the mahogany surface, leaning down until his face was inches from his mother’s.

"You took five years of my daughter's life from me," Luca whispered. "You made my wife scrub floors in the house I bought for her. You made them sleep in freezing rooms while you sat here drinking vintage wine."

"Luca—"

"Shut your mouth," he snapped, his voice vibrating with such ferocity that Elena finally shrank back. "You are stripped of the Moretti name. Every account in your name is frozen as of this second. You will be escorted to the old farmhouse in Rockford under armed guard. You will have no phone. No internet. No visitors. If you take one step off that property, I will let Marco handle you as an enemy of this syndicate."

"I am your mother!" she shrieked, her aristocratic facade finally cracking into jagged pieces.

"My mother died five minutes ago," Luca said without a trace of remorse. "Guards! Remove her."

Two armed security guards entered, grabbed Elena by the elbows, and dragged her out as she cursed and screamed down the marble hallway.

Then, there was only the sound of rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I stood there, shivering in my thin uniform, my mind spinning so fast I felt sick.

Luca turned around. He looked at me, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and wild with a pain so deep it took my breath away. He took a hesitant step toward me, reaching out with an unsteady hand.

"Emily..." he whispered.

I took a step back, hitting the edge of the dining table.

"Don't," I cried out, tears spilling over. "Don't touch me, Luca. Please."