Chapter 3 - THE DIAMOND HE STOLE FROM MY PAST
I stared at the velvet box in Dante Valenti’s tattooed hands. The overhead chandelier caught the light of my grandmother’s diamond, fracturing it into a hundred tiny, mocking prisms.
“That’s mine,” I breathed, the words barely scraping past the lump in my throat. “My grandmother gave that to me the day she died. Daniel… you told me the hospital security couldn’t find it.”
Daniel’s face was the color of old ash. He backed away from the table, bumping into a silver ice bucket. “Claire, listen to me. I was going to get it back. I just needed temporary liquidity.”
“Liquidity?” I repeated, the word tasting like poison.
Eleven years. I had given this man eleven years of my life. I had washed his clothes, cooked his meals, balanced our checkbook, and loved his daughter as if she had grown in my own womb. I had let them cut me open and take an organ from my body. And while I was bleeding on a hospital bed, he was pawning my family heirloom and selling our daughter to the highest bidder.
“Elaine,” Daniel panicked, turning to his ex-wife. “Tell them. Tell them this was your idea. You wanted Lily back!”
Elaine stood up, her expensive silk dress rustling in the dead quiet of the room. Her eyes darted toward Dante, terrified. “I didn’t tell you to pawn your wife’s jewelry, Daniel! I just told you I wanted my daughter. My husband… Richard… he wants a complete family for his public image. He’s running for state senate. Lily is part of that image.”
Lily let out a ragged sob and buried her face in my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her, shielding her as best as I could with my aching body.
“So I’m a prop?” Lily cried into my dress. “You didn’t even come to my dialysis appointments! You let Mom sit with me for hundreds of hours while my blood was cleaned through a machine, and now you want me for a campaign photo?”
“Lily, sweetheart, that’s not fair—” Elaine began.
“Do not call her sweetheart,” Dante’s voice cracked through the room like a whip.
He didn’t yell, but the sheer, vibrating authority in his tone made Elaine snap her mouth shut. Dante looked at his men—three large, impeccably dressed figures standing near the dining room doors. He gave them a single nod.
The men stepped forward, seamlessly blocking the exits. The remaining dinner guests murmured in panic, but no one dared move.
Dante knelt beside my chair again. His dark eyes, which had been so ruthless seconds ago, were startlingly gentle when he looked at me. “Mrs. Mercer, you and your daughter need to leave this room. You are shaking, and you are in pain.”
“Where are we supposed to go?” I whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracing a hot path down my cheek. “He mortgaged our house. He pawned my ring. He sold my daughter.”
“You are going to my hotel,” Dante said firmly. “Nobody touches you there. Nobody speaks to you unless you allow it. My doctor will check your incision, and my people will keep him,” he shot a look of pure disgust at Daniel, “far away from you.”
I looked at Lily. She nodded frantically, her hands gripping my navy dress.
Dante stood up and offered me his hand. I hesitated for only a second before placing my trembling fingers in his warm, calloused palm. He helped me up slowly, mindful of my surgery.
We started toward the door, Dante acting as a human shield between us and Daniel.
“Claire, you can’t leave!” Daniel shouted, his voice cracking with desperation. “If you walk out that door with him, you leave with nothing! The accounts are frozen!”
I didn’t turn around.
But as we reached the heavy oak doors, Elaine’s voice echoed sharply across the room, stopping me in my tracks.
“Let her go, Daniel,” Elaine sneered, her mask of maternal perfection completely gone. “Let her walk away. It just makes the life insurance payout easier to claim when the kid’s body rejects the kidney.”
I froze.
The blood drained from my head so fast I swayed. Dante caught my elbow, steadying me.
May you like
I turned slowly to face Elaine. “What did you just say?”
Elaine smiled, a cold, twisted expression. “Tell her, Daniel. Tell her about the two-million-dollar policy you took out on Lily three days before the transplant. The one that pays out if the organ fails within six months.”
