Chapter 5 - THE HOUSEKEEPER'S SECRET
Mrs. Gable shoved me down the dark servant’s corridor.
The air was stale, smelling of bleach and old wood. This hallway ran parallel to the main house, designed so the staff could move unseen. Tonight, it felt like a tomb.
I kept one hand protectively over my stomach, stumbling slightly on my swollen ankles as the housekeeper jabbed the gun into my back.
“Where are you taking me?” I whispered, my voice shaking.
“To clean up a mess you shouldn't have started,” Mrs. Gable snapped.
She forced me down a narrow flight of concrete stairs that led to the sub-basement—the old wine cellar that hadn't been used since Prohibition.
It was freezing down here.
She pushed me into a small, windowless storage room and flicked on a single, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The room was empty, save for a heavy wooden chair in the center.
“Sit,” she ordered.
I sat down, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Mrs. Gable locked the heavy door and turned to face me. For six months, I had known her as a stern, silent woman who meticulously managed the mansion’s inventory.
Now, holding a suppressed pistol, she looked entirely different. Cold. Calculating.
“You ruined everything tonight, Nora,” she said, pacing in front of the door. “We were three days away from the wedding. Three days from taking complete control of the Moretti assets.”
“We?” I asked, forcing myself to sound braver than I felt. “Who is 'we'? Michael wrote that Carlo Bellini has been dead for two years.”
Mrs. Gable smiled grimly.
“He has. Carlo died of a stroke. But nobody outside the inner circle knows. The Bellini empire is currently being run by a proxy.”
She walked closer, her eyes gleaming with malice.
“Michael thought he was the mastermind. He thought he was playing Vanessa, playing Luca, playing everyone. But Michael is a fool. He’s weak, just like his mother.”
“You work for the Bellinis,” I realized.
“I am a Bellini,” Mrs. Gable said coldly. “Carlo was my brother.”
My jaw dropped.
The stern, gray-haired housekeeper who had managed the Moretti estate for twenty years was a Bellini spy. She had been embedded in this house for decades.
“You’ve been here since before I was born,” I whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “And I remember your mother very well.”
I gripped the arms of the wooden chair. “What did you do to her?”
Mrs. Gable let out a harsh laugh.
“Eleanor was a stupid, naive girl. She thought Arthur Moretti was going to leave his wife for her. She thought she was special.”
The blood drained from my face.
“Arthur?” I breathed. “My mother… and Arthur?”
Mrs. Gable nodded, enjoying my shock.
“Oh, they didn't tell you that part? Eleanor wasn't just a maid. She was Arthur’s mistress. And when she got pregnant, she thought she had secured her place in this house.”
I shook my head violently. “No. My mother raised me alone. I’m twenty-four years old. The math doesn't make sense.”
“Because you aren't the child she was pregnant with back then,” Mrs. Gable sneered.
She leaned down, putting her face inches from mine.
“Thirty years ago, Eleanor had a baby boy. Arthur’s son. His true firstborn. When Rosa found out, she went insane. She demanded the child be taken away, or she would expose the family’s legitimate businesses to the feds.”
I couldn't breathe. I felt like the room was shrinking.
“What happened to the baby?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“We took him,” Mrs. Gable said simply. “Carlo took the boy as collateral to ensure Arthur never moved against us. Eleanor ran away, completely broken. She eventually had you with some nobody bartender on the South Side.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. My mother had carried this unimaginable grief her entire life. She had lost her first child to the mafia.
“Where is he?” I choked out. “Where is my brother?”
Mrs. Gable stood up straight.
“He’s upstairs.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Think about it, Nora,” Mrs. Gable said, a twisted smile forming on her lips. “Rosa’s eldest son, Michael, is actually a Bellini. Arthur’s eldest son… was raised by us.”
She pointed a finger toward the ceiling.
“When Rosa’s second son was born, we simply made a trade. To keep the peace. To keep the bloodlines tangled.”
My heart stopped.
I thought about the man upstairs. The man with the dark hair and tattoos. The man who had just dismantled his entire life to protect a pregnant maid.
“Luca,” I whispered.
Mrs. Gable nodded slowly.
“Luca isn't Rosa’s son. He’s Eleanor’s. Luca is your brother.”
Before I could even process the magnitude of what she had just said, the heavy wooden door of the storage room exploded inward.
Splinters rained down across the concrete floor.
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Standing in the doorway, holding a massive sledgehammer, was Daniel.
And standing right behind him, holding a very large gun, was Luca.
