Chapter 4 - THE TORN COAT
The silence that followed Emma’s words was heavy enough to crush bone.
I stared at my three-year-old daughter, my mind completely short-circuiting. Emma had been just a year old when David died. How could she possibly remember anything?
“Emma,” I breathed, pulling her back so I could look into her eyes. “Sweetheart, what are you saying? You don’t know this woman.”
“I do,” Emma insisted, her lower lip trembling. She pointed at Vivian again, who was now backing away toward the archway, looking like a cornered animal. “She came to our house. The night Daddy went to sleep forever. She was yelling. She tore Daddy’s coat.”
The room spun.
The night David died, the police told me his car had skidded off the rainy highway and burst into flames. But earlier that evening, before he left the house for his “late shift,” I had found a strange tear in the lapel of his favorite wool coat. When I asked him about it, he looked terrified and told me he had caught it on a car door.
Vivian had been at our house.
“You’re a liar!” Vivian shrieked, dropping all pretense of elegance. “She’s a stupid child making up stories! I’ve never seen that man in my life! The photograph is a fake!”
“Vivian,” Alessandro said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it possessed a terrifying, magnetic pull that stopped her dead in her tracks. “If the photograph is a fake, why did you slap Clara tonight over spilled juice?”
Vivian swallowed hard. “Because she’s clumsy! She ruined a priceless rug!”
“No,” Alessandro corrected, stepping toward his fiancée with the slow, deliberate grace of an apex predator. “You slapped her because you recognized her. You wanted her fired and thrown out of my house tonight, before I had the chance to look closely at her. Before she had the chance to recognize you.”
“Alessandro, please—”
“Guards,” Alessandro commanded, not breaking eye contact with Vivian.
Two massive enforcers stepped out from the shadows.
“Lock Miss Romano in the East Wing guest suite,” Alessandro ordered. “If she tries to leave, break her legs.”
“You can’t do this to me!” Vivian screamed as the guards seized her arms, dragging her across the marble floor. “My father will destroy you! Alessandro!”
Her screams faded down the corridor, leaving the grand hall completely silent once more.
Don Ricci watched the scene with a smug, satisfied smirk. “A beautiful display of household management, Alessandro. But it changes nothing. The widow and the child come with us.”
Alessandro turned his attention back to the twelve crime bosses. He slipped the photograph and the iron key into his inner jacket pocket.
“The widow and the child stay with me,” Alessandro said. “If you want them, Ricci, you will have to burn Villa Moretti to the ground to get them.”
Ricci’s smirk vanished. “You are making a fatal mistake for a woman you do not know.”
“I know enough,” Alessandro replied. “Get out of my house. All of you. The dinner is over.”
For a terrifying moment, I thought the bosses would draw their weapons again. But Alessandro Moretti’s reputation was not built on bluffs. He was a man who had single-handedly decimated a rival cartel at the age of twenty-four. They knew if violence started here, very few of them would walk out alive.
One by one, the bosses turned and walked out, their guards shadowing them. Don Ricci was the last to leave. He paused at the door, locking eyes with me.
“A key without a door is just a piece of rust, Mrs. Bennett,” Ricci said coldly. “I hope your husband’s secrets are worth dying for.”
When the heavy oak doors finally clicked shut, the tension drained from the room. I felt my knees give out.
I collapsed onto the Persian rug, clutching Emma to my chest, completely overwhelmed. My husband had a secret life. The woman who just slapped me knew him. The most powerful mafia boss in Milan had just declared war to save my life.
Strong, warm hands gently gripped my shoulders.
I looked up. Alessandro was kneeling beside me again. The cold, ruthless Don was gone. The man looking at me now had eyes full of profound, unexpected gentleness.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly.
“No,” I whispered, wiping a stray tear from my cheek. “But I don’t understand any of this. Why are you helping me? I’m just your housekeeper.”
Alessandro looked at Emma, who had finally stopped crying and was resting her head on my shoulder.
“You are not just a housekeeper, Clara,” Alessandro said quietly. “And I am not helping you out of charity. I am helping you because twelve years ago, my father was murdered. The police called it a heart attack. But I always knew it was a lie.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the rusted iron key.
“Your husband was the only man who had the proof of who really killed my father,” Alessandro said. “He hid it to protect you. And now, we are going to find it.”
Before I could process his words, a loud, frantic banging echoed from the service corridor.
One of Alessandro’s guards burst into the room, his face pale, blood dripping from his shoulder.
“Boss!” the guard gasped, leaning heavily against the archway. “It’s Vivian! She wasn't acting alone! She had someone on the inside!”
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Alessandro stood up instantly, his gun already drawn. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone, sir,” the guard coughed, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “One of our own men shot me and broke her out. They took a car from the garage. They’re running.”
