Chapter 10 - THE MASTER SUITE HAD A SECOND BEDROOM
The mansion was finally quiet.
The police had left. The broken glass had been swept away.
The heavy oak doors of the estate were bolted shut, secured by Luca’s most trusted men.
We walked up the grand staircase.
Not the servant stairs. The main staircase.
For eleven months, I had only walked these steps carrying a vacuum or a silver tray.
Tonight, I walked them holding the hand of the head of the family.
Luca led me to the third floor.
The family wing.
He pushed open the heavy double doors at the end of the hall.
The master suite.
I hesitated at the threshold.
“Luca… I can’t sleep in here.”
He stopped and looked back at me, his expression softening.
“Maria, you are not a maid anymore. You are blood. You are family. You belong in this wing.”
He pulled me gently inside.
The room was massive, dominated by a king-sized bed, a marble fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the estate.
But he didn’t lead me to the main bed.
He walked past the fireplace and opened a set of French doors I had always assumed led to a closet.
It wasn’t a closet.
It was a second, adjoined bedroom.
It was beautifully furnished in soft creams and gold.
A large, plush bed sat in the center.
And sitting on the nightstand was a framed photograph.
I walked over to it.
It was a picture of my mother, standing next to Luca’s mother.
They were young, laughing, their arms wrapped around each other.
“My mother kept this room ready for her,” Luca said quietly from the doorway. “She always hoped she would come back. Now, it’s yours.”
I traced the glass over my mother’s smiling face.
The overwhelming sense of belonging crashed over me.
I wasn't an orphan scraping by on seventy dollars a week anymore.
I was home.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice thick.
Luca walked into the room.
He looked exhausted. The bruises on his knuckles were beginning to purple.
But his eyes never left mine.
“You should sleep,” he said softly. “It’s been a long night.”
He turned to leave, his broad shoulders filling the doorway.
I watched him walk away.
The man who had thrown himself in front of guns for me.
The man who had destroyed his own mother’s memorial to find the truth to protect me.
“Luca.”
He stopped in the hallway and turned back.
I stepped closer to him.
The distance between us vanished.
“You asked me in the chapel if I was afraid of losing my job,” I said quietly.
Luca nodded. “I remember.”
“I wasn’t afraid of losing the money,” I confessed, my heart pounding loudly in my ears. “I was afraid of leaving you.”
Luca’s breath hitched.
He stared at me, the air between us suddenly crackling with an intensity that had nothing to do with mafia politics or family secrets.
He took a slow step back into my room.
Then another.
Until he was standing right in front of me.
He reached up and cupped my face in his large, warm hands.
His thumbs gently stroked my cheekbones.
“I was never going to let you go, Maria,” he whispered, his voice incredibly deep. “Even before I knew who you were. Even when I thought I had to marry Vanessa to protect the family.”
He leaned his forehead against mine.
“You were the only real thing in this house.”
My eyes fluttered shut as his breath washed over my lips.
He didn’t kiss me. Not yet.
He just held me there, letting the profound, quiet intimacy of the moment settle over us both.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something sitting on the small writing desk near the window.
An envelope.
Thick, cream-colored, sealed with red wax.
Luca opened his eyes and followed my gaze.
He frowned, stepping away to pick it up.
May you like
It had my name written on it.
Isabella.
