Chapter 6 - Blood on the Ivory Floor
Luca stood up from the snow.
The storm whipped around his broad shoulders, but his gaze was locked entirely on me.
He didn't move like a predator anymore.
He moved like a man stepping into a dream he was terrified to wake from.
“Emma,” he said.
The wind carried his voice across the freezing expanse of the gravel quarry.
My fingers were trembling so hard I almost dropped the Glock.
“My mother was Sarah Sullivan,” I whispered, taking half a step backward.
My boots slid on the slick limestone gravel.
“She was a seamstress. She worked out of our kitchen.”
“Emma, don't run,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a low, soothing hum.
He held his open palms out toward me.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Lucia leaned forward from the stretcher, coughing violently against the cold air.
“The coat!” Lucia cried out, her voice raspy and broken.
“Sarah made that coat for me! She knew the lining! She took my baby to save her from Carlo!”
My mind spun into complete vertigo.
Images from my childhood flashed behind my eyelids like blinding strobe lights.
My mother never having baby pictures of me.
My mother moving us four times before I turned ten.
Her terrified face every time a black town car slowed down outside our apartment building.
And the locked tin box hidden beneath the floorboards in her sewing room.
The box she told me never to open unless she died.
When she passed away from cancer two years ago, the box was empty.
Someone had already taken it.
“Emma,” Luca said softly.
He was standing right in front of me now.
The heat radiating from his massive frame pushed back the sub-zero chill.
His scarred fingers gently reached toward the lapel of my heavy servant’s winter jacket.
“May I?” he asked.
It was the first time the ruthless mafia don had ever asked my permission for anything.
I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sand.
I nodded.
Luca unzipped the outer jacket.
Beneath it, I wore the thin, collared grey uniform blouse.
His large, calloused fingers gently unbuttoned the top two buttons.
He pulled the collar aside, exposing the pale skin beneath my left collarbone.
Luca stopped breathing.
His pupils dilated until his eyes looked completely black.
There, just beneath the ridge of my bone, was a dark, pigmented mark.
Curved.
A perfect crescent moon.
A strangled sound tore from Luca’s throat.
It wasn't a word.
It was twenty-two years of grief, fury, and unfulfilled longing collapsing all at once.
He dropped his head, resting his forehead against my shoulder.
His massive hands gripped my upper arms, trembling violently.
“Elena,” he choked out against my uniform.
“My little sister.”
I stood frozen.
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
I wasn't Emma Sullivan, the orphan maid scrubbing limestone floors for eight hundred dollars a week.
I was Elena Moretti.
The missing heir to one of the most powerful syndicates in North America.
“Luca,” Lucia wept from the back of the Suburban.
“Bring her here. Bring my daughter to me.”
Luca pulled back.
Tears had cut clear tracks through the grime and blood on his handsome face.
He took my shaking hand in his and led me to the edge of the vehicle.
Lucia reached out with both hands.
Her fingers touched my cheeks, my jaw, my hair.
Her skin was paper-thin, ice-cold, yet her touch carried an electric warmth that pierced straight through my chest.
“You have my eyes,” she whispered, sobbing.
“Sarah saved you. God bless that woman... she kept you safe.”
I collapsed against the side of the stretcher, my knees finally giving out.
I buried my face in the wool blankets, feeling her frail arms wrap tightly around my neck.
For the first time in two years since Sarah died, I didn't feel alone in the dark.
“Boss!” Daniel’s voice roared from the entrance of the drainage pipe.
Daniel emerged into the quarry, assault rifle raised, followed by four heavily armed Moretti soldiers.
“We heard shots! What happened?”
Daniel stopped dead in his tracks, taking in the scene.
Carlo Bellini lay bleeding in the snow.
Lucia Moretti was sitting up on the stretcher, weeping.
And Luca stood beside me, his arm wrapped protectively around my shoulders.
“Daniel,” Luca said, his voice instantly regaining its lethal authority.
“Boss?”
“Call the private trauma unit at St. Luke’s. Tell them my mother is coming home.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped.
He looked at Lucia, his eyes bulging in absolute shock.
“Mrs. Moretti? Sweet mother of God...”
“And Daniel,” Luca added, his eyes narrowing into slits.
“Yes, boss?”
“Emma is not a maid.”
Luca tightened his grip on my shoulder, pulling me firmly against his side.
“Her name is Elena Moretti. She is my sister. She is the blood heir of this family.”
The four soldiers behind Daniel immediately lowered their weapons and bowed their heads in deep, profound respect.
Daniel swallowed hard, nodding slowly.
“Understood, boss. May God protect the Moretti family.”
Luca looked down at Carlo Bellini, who was groaning in the red snow, clutching his shattered knee.
May you like
“Throw him in the trunk,” Luca ordered coldly.
“We have an engagement party to finish.”
