Chapter 3 - Blood on the Marble
The private wing of the Moretti estate was locked down within ten minutes.
Luca carried his mother into her master suite on the east wing, away from the prying eyes and rising murmurs of the guests below. Dr. Mercer, the family’s trusted personal physician, had already been summoned through a private back line and arrived with two trusted nurses before the ambulance drivers were even secured in the cellar.
"Heavy dose of midazolam," Dr. Mercer announced, pulling a syringe back from Mrs. Moretti’s arm after drawing a blood sample. "It's an aggressive sedative with amnesiac properties. In a woman her age with a mild cardiac condition, this dosage could have induced respiratory failure. Whoever prescribed this wasn't trying to calm her down, Luca. They were trying to erase her short-term memory."
Luca stood by the tall bay window overlooking the rear gardens, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. The muscles in his broad back were taut as iron cables.
"Can you stabilize her, Andrew?" Luca asked, his voice low and dangerous.
"She’ll sleep for another six to eight hours," Dr. Mercer said, adjusting the oxygen cannula beneath Mrs. Moretti’s nose. "Her heart rate is steadying. By dawn, she’ll be fully lucid. But she cannot be moved. Not an inch."
"No one enters this wing except you and Miller," Luca said. Then he turned his dark eyes toward me.
I was sitting on the velvet bench near the vanity, clutching Mrs. Moretti’s little brass-bound diary to my chest with my right hand. My left arm was resting uselessly in my lap, throbbing with a sickening heat that made black spots dance across my peripheral vision.
Dr. Mercer glanced at me, noticing the dark stain soaking through my grey uniform sleeve. "Good Lord, young lady. What happened to you?"
"I'm fine," I lied instinctively, biting the inside of my cheek. "Just a bruise."
"Sophie," Luca said. The single word wasn't loud, but it silenced any further protest.
He walked across the Persian carpet, stopped directly in front of me, and dropped to one knee. The sheer proximity of him—the crisp scent of sandalwood, cedar, and raw adrenaline—made my throat go bone-dry.
Luca reached out and carefully took my wrist. Even through his gentleness, a sharp gasp tore out of my throat as the torn tissue protested.
"She took a blow from an iron door lock," Luca told the doctor without looking away from my eyes. "The service elevator. The two men Vanessa hired tried to pin her against the wall."
Dr. Mercer stepped over with surgical shears and carefully slit my sleeve from wrist to shoulder. When the cloth fell away, both men went still.
My forearm was swollen to twice its normal size, the skin blooming with a deep, mottled purple and black that stretched from the wrist past my elbow. A two-inch laceration near the joint was leaking sluggish blood down the side of my arm.
"Compound sprain with deep contusion and a laceration," Dr. Mercer diagnosed grimly, pulling antiseptic and sterile gauze from his medical kit. "Miss Bennett, you shouldn't have been able to carry a tray, let alone drag an adult woman out of a moving elevator."
"She didn't let them take my mother," Luca said, his voice dropping an octave.
His fingers rested lightly against the uninjured skin of my shoulder. His thumb traced a gentle, steadying circle against my collarbone. For a man who ran shipping fleets, corporate empires, and hundreds of ruthless negotiations, his touch was impossibly soft.
"Why didn't you run, Sophie?" he asked, searching my face with an intensity that made my heart race faster than the pain ever could. "You knew what Vanessa was capable of. You knew I wasn't home yet. You could have walked out the back gates and called the police."
"Mrs. Moretti took care of me when I had pneumonia last winter," I said, my voice trembling slightly. "When the housekeeper wanted to fire me for missing three shifts, your mother brought tea to my quarters in the carriage house herself. She paid for my medicine. In this house, people treat maids like background furniture. She treated me like a daughter."
I looked down at the bloodied floorboards.
"I don't leave family behind, Mr. Moretti. Even when it isn't mine."
Luca’s jaw clenched so hard I heard the faint click of his teeth. Something shifted in the depth of his dark eyes—a wall collapsing, an unspoken realization hardening into an unshakable vow.
"It is yours now," he said quietly.
Dr. Mercer finished cleaning the wound, stitching the torn skin near my elbow with swift, practiced precision before wrapping the entire arm in a supportive splint and fresh white bandages.
"A mild painkiller for now," Dr. Mercer said, handing me two small tablets and a glass of water. "No lifting for three weeks. Rest, Miss Bennett."
"She won't be lifting anything ever again," Luca said, rising to his full height. He took the brass-bound notebook from my lap and tucked it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. "Come with me, Sophie."
"Where, sir?"
May you like
"Downstairs. We have an engagement to terminate."
***
