Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
“Open your purse, Alessandra.”
Matteo’s voice didn’t rise in volume. It didn’t have to.
The thirty-one guests sitting around the dining table had completely stopped breathing. The clinking of silver forks, the soft murmurs about Chicago real estate, the polite laughter—it all vanished.
Alessandra stared at him.
Her manicured hands gripped the edge of the mahogany table. The diamonds at her ears caught the candlelight, but the glow didn't reach her eyes. They were wide. Panicked.
“Matteo, please,” she whispered, her arrogant tone entirely gone. “You’re embarrassing me in front of our friends.”
“I’m not the one who brought a box of unknown powder into my dining room,” Matteo said.
He didn’t reach for the purse himself. He just waited.
Men like Matteo DeLuca never rushed. They let the silence do the work.
Alessandra looked at the guests. She looked at Ava, who was watching her with the sharp, unforgiving judgment that only a fourteen-year-old girl could muster. Finally, she looked at me.
Her eyes were venomous, but beneath the anger, I saw something else.
Pure, unadulterated terror.
Her hands shook as she unclasped the gold latch of the red evening bag.
She reached inside.
“Take it out and put it on the table,” Matteo instructed softly.
Alessandra swallowed hard. She pulled out a small, silver tin—the kind usually meant for breath mints. She set it on the white linen tablecloth.
Matteo didn’t touch it. He looked at his head of security, a towering, silent man named Dante who stood by the dining room doors.
Dante walked over. He wore black leather gloves. He picked up the tin, popped the lid, and tipped it forward.
Six tiny white paper packets spilled onto the table.
They were completely unmarked.
“Sweetener,” Matteo repeated, the word tasting like ash in the quiet room.
He looked at Alessandra.
“Are you trying to kill me, Alessandra?”
“No!” Her voice broke, a sharp, desperate sound. “Matteo, I swear to God, it’s not poison. It’s just… it’s a sedative. A strong one. It was only supposed to make you sleep for a few hours. That’s all!”
The guests began to murmur, chairs shifting uncomfortably. A few of the men nearest Matteo reached inside their suit jackets.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I clutched the tray against my apron, wishing I could disappear into the wallpaper. A sedative. The woman who was supposed to marry him was trying to knock him out.
“Why?” Matteo asked.
Tears spilled over Alessandra’s eyelashes, ruining her perfect makeup. “They told me to. They said if you were awake, you would fight. They said if you were asleep, nobody would get hurt.”
Matteo’s expression turned to stone. “Who is ‘they’?”
Alessandra shook her head frantically. “I don’t know their names! They contacted me three days ago. They told me exactly what to do.”
Matteo leaned forward. The air in the room felt impossibly heavy.
“And what were you getting in return for drugging your fiancé?”
Alessandra sobbed, burying her face in her hands.
“I wasn’t getting anything, Matteo. I was paying a ransom.”
The room went dead silent again.
Matteo frowned. “A ransom for what?”
Alessandra reached into her open purse one more time. Her hand was trembling so violently she almost dropped what she pulled out.
She slid it across the mahogany table toward Matteo.
It wasn’t a document. It wasn’t a flash drive.
It was a photograph.
Matteo picked it up. His dark eyes scanned the image.
For the first time since I had started working at the DeLuca estate, I saw the mafia boss lose his composure. The color completely drained from his face. The casual grace of his posture shattered, replaced by a rigid, terrifying tension.
He didn’t show the photo to Dante.
He turned it around and held it up so his daughter could see it.
Ava gasped, covering her mouth with both hands.
I was standing close enough to see it, too.
It was a picture of Ava.
She was asleep in her bed. Wearing the blue pajamas she had worn two nights ago. The photo had been taken from inside her bedroom, standing right next to her pillow.
Someone had been inside the house. Inside his daughter’s room.
“They told me,” Alessandra wept, her voice echoing in the horrified silence, “that if I didn’t drug you tonight, they would come back for her. And this time, they wouldn’t just take a picture.”
I felt the blood leave my head.
The arrogant, cruel woman who had treated me like dirt for eight months wasn’t a mastermind. She wasn’t trying to seize power. She was a terrified pawn, blackmailed into paralyzing the only man who could stop a kidnapping.
“When are they coming?” Matteo demanded, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
Alessandra looked at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.
It read 9:00 PM.
“They said the gates would open at nine,” she choked out.
Matteo stood up so fast his heavy dining chair crashed backward onto the hardwood floor.
“Dante!” Matteo roared. “Lock the house down! Now!”
Dante reached for his radio.
He pressed the button to speak to the perimeter guards.
Only static answered him.
“Boss,” Dante said, his voice tight. “The signal is jammed.”
Before Matteo could issue another order, a deafening explosion rattled the crystal chandeliers above our heads.
The sound came from the front of the estate. The heavy iron gates had just been blown off their hinges.
Screams erupted around the dining table. The guests scrambled, knocking over wine glasses and china plates. The beautiful, orderly dinner party turned into absolute chaos in a matter of seconds.
Then, the lights went out.
Total, suffocating darkness swallowed the room.
Only the faint moonlight filtering through the heavy drapes offered any visibility.
“Ava! Get to the floor!” Matteo yelled over the panic.
I dropped my serving tray. It hit the floor with a loud clatter. My instinct was to run for the kitchen, to hide in the pantry where it was safe. But through the darkness, I heard Ava crying.
She was just fourteen. My sister’s age.
I crawled under the table, feeling my way across the thick Persian rug until my hands brushed against silk.
“Ava?” I whispered.
“Sophie!” she sobbed, grabbing my arm with terrifying strength. “I’m scared!”
“I’ve got you,” I promised, pulling her close against my chest.
Heavy boots slammed against the marble floors in the hallway outside the dining room. Men were shouting. Gunfire erupted—short, violent bursts that made my ears ring.
Someone kicked the dining room doors open.
Flashlight beams sliced through the darkness, sweeping over the terrified guests cowering on the floor.
“Where is DeLuca?” a harsh voice demanded.
Suddenly, a figure stumbled into the room from the service corridor.
It was one of Matteo’s perimeter guards. His white shirt was soaked in dark blood. He was barely standing.
He staggered toward the table, clutching something tightly in his fist.
He collapsed onto the floor right next to where Ava and I were hiding.
Matteo slid across the rug, grabbing the dying guard by the collar.
“Who breached the gate?” Matteo demanded. “Who is it?”
The guard couldn’t speak. He just weakly opened his bloody fist, dropping a heavy silver object onto the floor.
It rolled right to the edge of my apron.
A silver pocket watch.
May you like
Matteo stared at it in the dim moonlight. The breath hitched in his throat.
“It can’t be,” Matteo whispered.
