"Twenty-six guests watched as the feared Mafia boss dropped to his knees and held his supposedly dead dog—then his security chief revealed someone had been paid to collect another animal.

The announcement dropped like a bomb, though Dante didn’t even blink.

“Are we informing the elder Bellini tonight, or waiting until the markets open tomorrow?” Dante asked with cold, surgical pragmatism.

“Tonight,” Luca replied, finally letting his hand fall from my face. The absence of his touch left my skin burning. “Let Vincent Bellini know that his daughter has violated the terms of our alliance. She has brought dishonor into my private sanctuary and attempted to desecrate the memory of my father. If she is still within the city limits of Chicago by sunrise, she will be treated as an enemy combatant.”

“Understood,” Dante said. He turned and marched out of the master suite, pulling out an encrypted satellite phone as the heavy double doors clicked shut behind him.

The suite fell into a heavy, charged quiet.

Bruno was now lying flat on the rug, his massive head resting beside the crate where the sick puppy slept. The warmth of the room and the security of Luca’s presence had finally allowed the old warrior to relax.

I stood there, feeling terribly out of place in my cheap, grease-stained housekeeper’s uniform against the imported Italian silk drapery and custom woodwork.

“I should... I should clean this up, Mr. Moretti,” I stammered, pointing vaguely to the mud tracks on the marble threshold. “And the puppy needs electrolyte fluid. If he’s that dehydrated, his kidneys will fail before morning.”

Luca stared at me. “You know how to care for sick animals?”

“My father was a country vet in downstate Illinois before he died,” I explained, looking down at my shoes. “Before the medical bills wiped out our savings and I had to leave nursing school to support my mom and brother, I spent half my life assisting in his clinic.”

Luca’s expression softened, a subtle shift that transformed his sharp, dangerous face into something strikingly handsome.

“You wanted to be a nurse?”

“I wanted a lot of things, sir. But bills don't wait for dreams.”

Luca walked over to his massive mahogany dressing chest, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a leather-bound checkbook and a sleek black pen. Without sitting down, he scribbled something across a slip of paper, ripped it out, and held it out to me.

I looked at it.

My heart nearly stopped.

It was a cashier-guaranteed draft made out to Emma Sullivan for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

“Mr. Moretti, I—I can’t take this,” I gasped, backing away with both hands raised. “I didn't bring Bruno to you for money! I did it because it was right!”

“I know you didn’t,” Luca said, taking a step toward me, forcing me to either take the paper or keep retreating until my back hit the wall. “That’s why you’re getting it. A greedy person would have taken Vanessa’s hundred dollars and looked the other way. A coward would have left the dog to freeze. You stood in front of twenty-six armed men and humiliated the woman I was supposed to marry, because you had the spine to do what was just.”

He took my right hand, turned it palm-up, and pressed the check into it, folding my fingers over the paper. His hands were warm, firm, and undeniably strong.

“Pay off your mother’s debt,” he said, his voice deep and commanding. “Pay your brother’s remaining tuition in full. Tomorrow, you will tender your resignation as a maid.”

Panic flared in my chest. “You’re firing me?”

Luca gave a rare, faint smile—a glimpse of white teeth that took my breath away. “I don't need a maid who defies orders, Emma. I need a personal assistant who cannot be bought. As of tonight, you run this house. You oversee my private affairs, you manage this estate’s logistics, and you will oversee the recovery of both of my dogs.”

“Mr. Moretti, I... I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes.”

Before I could formulate an answer, the elevator doors at the end of the private corridor dinged sharply, followed by loud, hysterical shouting.

“Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am? Luca!”

Vanessa Bellini burst past the two security guards at the door, her red dress torn at the hem, her mascara streaking black trails down her powdered cheeks. Behind her, two junior guards looked mortified, clearly hesitant to put their hands aggressively on a syndicate princess.

Luca didn’t flinch. He casually stepped between Vanessa and me, completely shielding me with his broad back.

“Luca!” Vanessa sobbed, throwing herself toward him, though she stopped short when she caught the venomous glare in his eyes. “You can’t do this! You’re throwing away our families' treaty over a mutt! An old, useless animal that was going to die anyway!”

“That animal,” Luca said, his voice chillingly level, “has protected my family since I was nineteen years old. When my father was ambushed in the warehouse district six years ago, Bruno took two rounds to the shoulder dragging him into an armored vehicle. He bled for this name. You, Vanessa, have only ever spent it.”

Vanessa’s face twisted into an ugly mask of rage. She looked past Luca’s shoulder and pointed a razor-sharp red acrylic nail directly at me.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Vanessa shrieked. “The little charity case! You’re humiliating me for a servant girl who scrubs your toilets! I’ve seen the way she looks at you! She planned this! She’s a scheming, thieving—”

*Crack.*

The sound wasn't a gunshot this time. It was the sound of Luca slamming his palm against the doorframe right beside Vanessa’s ear. The sheer force of the impact rattled the picture frames along the corridor.

Vanessa went instantly mute, her chest heaving in absolute terror.

“Remove the ring,” Luca whispered.

“Luca, no... our fathers—”

“Remove. The ring.”

Trembling, her hands shaking so violently she could barely grip the platinum band, Vanessa slid off the eight-carat emerald-cut diamond. She held it out with a pitiful, begging look.

Luca didn’t take it in his palm. He pinched it between two fingers, turned, and casually dropped it into the small cardboard box where the sick, abandoned puppy lay resting against Bruno’s snout.

The diamond clinked against the bottom of the box, covered in sawdust and puppy drool.

“Take her to the gate,” Luca told the guards without looking back. “If she sets foot within a mile of this property again, consider her a trespasser under lethal jurisdiction.”

The guards moved in, taking Vanessa by the arms. This time, they didn't hesitate. Her screams echoed down the hallway and faded into the descending elevator shaft until the estate was once again swallowed by silence.

Luca stood in the doorway for a long time, watching the empty hall. His broad shoulders rose and fell slowly.

Then, he turned back to me.

“You said the puppy needs electrolytes?” he asked calmly, as though he hadn't just dismantled a multi-million-dollar criminal marriage alliance.

“Y-yes, sir,” I answered, clutching the quarter-million-dollar check against my chest. “Pedialyte or saline with a glucose drip. And antibiotics for the respiratory infection.”

“Get your coat, Emma,” Luca said, walking toward his closet and pulling out a heavy black overcoat. “We’re taking my personal car. You’re going to show me how to save that little life.”

“You’re coming with me?”

Luca slipped his arms into the coat, looking down at me with an intensity that made the floor feel unstable beneath my feet.