THE MAFIA BOSS DISCOVERS HIS FIANCÉE'S SICK SECRET

I stood perfectly still in the bathroom, staring at the back of the torn photograph.

She cut the brakes.

My hands began to tremble. Luca’s first wife, Elena, had died in a tragic car accident four years ago. The official police report stated she lost control on a slick, rain-soaked curve.

But if this photograph was what Sophie had found last Thursday...

If this was what Dominic Bellini had violently twisted an eight-year-old’s wrist to take away...

A chilling realization washed over me. Dominic hadn’t succeeded. Sophie must have hidden the real photo and handed him a fake, or he dropped it when she scratched him, and she snatched it back. She had brought it up here to the safe room.

I quickly slipped the photograph into the deep pocket of my maid’s uniform.

When I stepped back into the bedroom, Teresa was tucking a heavy wool blanket around Sophie. The little girl’s eyes were heavy, exhausted from the sheer terror of the evening.

“Is she asleep?” I whispered.

Teresa nodded, her wrinkled face pale and drawn. “Finally. Oh, Hannah, the things that woman forced her to say…”

“Mr. Moretti won’t let them near her again,” I said softly.

Teresa looked down at her own trembling, arthritic hands. “You don’t understand Vanessa. She won't let a public humiliation stop her. She needs this marriage.”

Before I could ask what she meant, a heavy knock echoed against the steel door.

I jumped.

“It’s Luca,” a deep voice called out.

I quickly unlocked the heavy deadbolts.

Luca stepped inside. His tie was gone, his collar unbuttoned, and the knuckles of his right hand were split and bleeding.

He didn’t look like the polished businessman who had sat at the head of the table twenty minutes ago. He looked like a man who had just dismantled his own life.

He walked straight to the bed and knelt beside his sleeping daughter. He pressed his forehead gently against her small shoulder for a long moment.

Then he looked up at his mother.

“They’re gone,” he said quietly. “Vanessa and her family have been escorted off the grounds.”

Teresa let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for weeks. “And the wedding?”

“Cancelled.”

I felt a rush of relief.

But then Luca stood up, his jaw tight. “At least, I told her it was. But Vanessa looked me dead in the eye and said she’d be back tomorrow morning. She said I was making a mistake.”

“She’s delusional,” I blurted out.

Luca turned his dark eyes toward me. “No, Hannah. She’s desperate. The Bellini family is completely bankrupt. I found out yesterday. They needed my money to save their business. Without this wedding, they lose everything.”

Teresa gasped. “Luca, you knew they were using you?”

“I suspected it,” he admitted. “But I didn’t care about the money. I just wanted Sophie to have a mother. I thought Vanessa cared about her.”

He ran a hand through his dark hair, looking suddenly exhausted.

“I need to check the perimeter with my security chief. Lock this door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

As soon as he left, the silence in the room felt heavy, suffocating.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the edge of the photograph. I had to show it to him. But not while he was frantic about security.

I walked over to the small kitchenette in the corner to pour Teresa a glass of water.

“You need to take your evening medication, Mrs. Moretti,” I said softly, opening the cabinet where we kept her emergency supplies.

I pulled out the orange plastic pill bottle Vanessa had given me two weeks ago.

“Make sure she takes one of these every night,” Vanessa had instructed me back then. “Her new doctor prescribed them for her memory.”

I poured a single white pill into my palm and brought it to Teresa.

She stared at the pill.

Then, very slowly, she shook her head.

“I’m not taking that, Hannah.”

“But Mrs. Moretti, your doctor—”

“My doctor didn’t prescribe those,” Teresa interrupted, her voice suddenly sharper, clearer than I had heard it in months.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Teresa reached into the pocket of her knitted cardigan. She pulled out her wooden rosary beads.

Carefully, she twisted the silver crucifix at the bottom.

To my absolute shock, the crucifix unscrewed. The bottom half of the cross was hollow.

Teresa turned it over and tapped it against her palm.

A tiny, pale blue pill fell out.

“This is my heart medication,” she whispered. “The real one. The one that keeps me alive.”

I stared at the white pill in my own hand. “Then… what is this?”

“I don’t know,” Teresa said softly. “But ever since Vanessa brought that new doctor to the house, every time I took the white pills, I couldn’t wake up the next morning. My head felt thick. I couldn't remember conversations.”

My blood ran cold.

“You’ve been hiding them?”

“For three weeks,” she nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “I pretended to swallow them, then spat them into my napkins. I knew Vanessa was trying to make me seem crazy so Luca would put me in a home. But I couldn't prove it.”

She grabbed my hand, her grip surprisingly strong.

“Hannah, she was drugging me. And she was searching my room while I was supposed to be unconscious.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. “What was she looking for?”

Teresa didn’t answer right away. She looked at Sophie, then back at me.

With a trembling hand, she reached beneath the collar of her blouse and pulled out a long silver chain.

Hanging from the chain was a small, rusted brass key.

“My husband’s study,” she whispered. “The locked drawer in his old desk. She doesn't know I kept the key.”

“Mrs. Moretti, what’s in that drawer?”

Teresa looked at me with a fear so deep it made my stomach turn.