Chapter 2 - [THE SCAR BENEATH THE DIAMOND WATCH]
The dining room remained so quiet you could hear the crystal pendants on the chandelier softly clinking together.
Thirty-six guests held their breath.
Luca slowly turned his head to follow his daughter’s trembling finger.
Sitting two chairs down from Vanessa’s father was Dominic Bellini.
Vanessa’s older brother.
He was thirty-two, wearing a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, his dark hair slicked back. His face was frozen in a mask of polite confusion, but I noticed the way his left hand instinctively pulled back from the edge of the table.
“Dominic,” Luca said.
It wasn’t a question. It was a command disguised as a name.
Dominic forced a tight smile. “Luca, she’s just a child. She’s confused. I haven’t been alone with Sophie in weeks.”
Sophie buried her face deeper into her father’s shoulder.
“He grabbed me,” she whispered.
The sound of those three words seemed to suck the oxygen out of the massive room.
Vanessa stepped forward, her red silk dress rustling sharply. “Luca, stop this right now. You cannot seriously be entertaining the imagination of an eight-year-old girl to humiliate my family at our rehearsal dinner.”
Luca ignored her entirely.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream.
He just kept his eyes locked on Dominic.
“My daughter said you grabbed her.”
Dominic stood up, knocking his heavy oak chair backward. It scraped harshly against the marble floor.
“I did not touch your daughter, Moretti. If she tripped and hurt her wrist, that’s on your staff for not watching her. Don't let your senile mother and a lying maid turn you against your future family.”
I felt a surge of pure anger.
Teresa squeezed her eyes shut, pulling her shawl tighter around her frail shoulders. She had blamed herself for days.
Luca gently set Sophie down.
He looked at me.
“Hannah. Take my mother and my daughter upstairs. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” I said quickly.
I reached for Sophie’s good hand, then offered my other arm to Teresa.
As I guided them toward the grand staircase, I glanced back over my shoulder.
Luca was walking slowly toward Dominic’s side of the table.
“Take off your jacket, Dominic,” Luca said quietly.
Dominic stiffened. “What?”
“Take it off.”
“Luca, this is insane,” Vanessa’s father, Carlo Bellini, finally spoke up, adjusting his tie nervously. “We are guests in your home.”
“You are sitting at my table,” Luca corrected, his voice dangerously soft. “Eating my food. Preparing to marry into my family. And my daughter just said your son put his hands on her. Take off the jacket, Dominic.”
Dominic’s jaw clenched.
For a second, I thought he was going to refuse.
But there were six security men standing by the doors. They hadn’t moved, but their hands had drifted to their waistbands.
Slowly, Dominic unbuttoned his suit jacket and let it slide off his shoulders.
He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt. On his left wrist, a heavy diamond watch gleamed in the light.
“Roll up your sleeves,” Luca ordered.
Vanessa lunged forward, grabbing Luca’s arm. “Don’t do this to him! He’s going to be your brother-in-law!”
Luca didn’t even look at her. He just pulled his arm out of her grasp.
Dominic swallowed hard. With trembling fingers, he began to unbutton his right cuff.
“The left one,” Luca said.
Dominic stopped.
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his temple.
“I scratched myself at the gym,” Dominic lied, his voice cracking. “It’s nothing.”
“Show me.”
Dominic hesitated, then slowly rolled up his left sleeve, pushing the heavy diamond watch higher up his forearm.
Three deep, red, healing scratch marks ran down his skin.
They were tiny.
The exact size of an eight-year-old girl’s fingernails.
The entire dining room erupted into horrified gasps.
Teresa let out a small, heartbreaking sob beside me.
“She tried to fight you off,” Luca whispered, staring at the marks.
Dominic took a step back. “She was holding something she wasn’t supposed to have! I was just trying to take it away from her! I didn’t mean to twist her wrist, she pulled back too hard!”
Luca moved so fast I barely registered it.
He grabbed Dominic by the throat and slammed him backward onto the dining table. Crystal wine glasses shattered, spilling dark red liquid across the expensive white linen like blood.
Women screamed.
Vanessa shrieked, “Luca, stop!”
Luca leaned over Dominic, his voice dropping to a terrifying, guttural growl.
“What was my daughter holding?”
Dominic choked, his face turning purple. “Nothing! It was just trash!”
“What. Was. She. Holding.”
“A picture!” Dominic gasped, clawing at Luca’s hand. “A stupid old picture!”
Luca released him, letting Dominic slump to the floor, gasping for air.
He looked down at the man with absolute disgust.
“Get out of my house,” Luca said. “All of you.”
Vanessa’s father scrambled to his feet. “Luca, please—”
“If any of you are still on my property in five minutes, you won't be leaving in a car.”
Luca turned his back on them and looked up at the staircase where I was still standing with Sophie and Teresa.
His dark eyes found mine.
“Take them to the safe room, Hannah.”
I nodded, my hands shaking, and hurried the old woman and the little girl up the remaining steps.
Once we were inside the heavy steel-reinforced door of the master suite’s panic room, Sophie sat on the edge of the bed, crying softly.
Teresa sat beside her, gently rubbing her back.
“It’s okay, my sweet angel,” Teresa whispered. “You were so brave.”
I went to the en-suite bathroom to get a wet washcloth for Sophie’s face.
But as I opened the vanity drawer to find a fresh towel, my breath hitched in my throat.
Tucked underneath a stack of hand towels was a crumpled, slightly torn photograph.
I carefully pulled it out.
It was an old picture of Luca, smiling, with his arm wrapped around a beautiful woman with dark, flowing hair. His first wife. Elena.
But that wasn't what made my heart stop.
I flipped the photo over.
Written in dark, hurried handwriting on the back were four words.
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