Chapter 3 - The Interrogation in the Cellar
Consciousness returned in slow, heavy waves, accompanied by the scent of lavender, sterile gauze, and the faint, unmistakable aroma of expensive pipe tobacco.
I blinked against the soft, warm light of a bedside lamp. I wasn't in my small maid’s quarters in the attic. I was lying in a king-sized four-poster bed draped in Egyptian cotton, the ceiling soaring twelve feet above me, adorned with intricate white plaster moldings.
My right thigh was wrapped in thick, tight bandages, radiating a dull, throbbing ache, but the razor-sharp agony was gone, muted by painkillers.
“Stay still,” a low, resonant voice said from the shadows near the window.
I jumped slightly, wincing as the movement pulled at the stitches.
Luca stepped out of the dim light. He had removed his tuxedo jacket, wearing only his charcoal waistcoat and white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. A heavy tumbler of amber whiskey sat on the nightstand beside him. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes carved deeper by the events of the last four hours, but his posture was that of a coiled predator.
“Mr. Moretti…” I stammered, pulling the duvet over my chest. “I shouldn’t be in this room. This is the master guest suite.”
“You will sleep wherever I put you, Hannah,” he said, pulling an armchair toward the bed and sitting down. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, his gray eyes pinning me to the mattress. “Rossi put twenty-two stitches in your leg. He said the cut missed the femoral artery by less than an inch. Another half-centimeter, and you would have bled out on my ballroom floor before you ever touched that portrait.”
I swallowed the dryness in my throat. “I had to stop her.”
“Why?” Luca asked. The question wasn't hostile; it was intensely searching. “You’ve worked for me for eleven months. I pay you well, but not well enough to take a knife for my daughter. Most people in this city would have run out the back gate the moment they saw the steel.”
I looked down at my bandaged hands, where tiny cuts were covered with butterfly strips.
“Because Lily doesn't know what this world is yet,” I said softly, my voice trembling with remembered emotion. “When my father died four years ago, my mother got sick. The creditors took our home, our memories, everything. I know what it feels like to be six years old and realize the people who are supposed to protect you are powerless. Lily… Lily looks at you like you are the sun, Mr. Moretti. If she was sent away to a place where no one knew her name, thinking you abandoned her… it would have killed her soul. A cut on my leg is nothing compared to that.”
Luca remained silent for a long moment. His jaw worked silently, a muscle twitching near his temple. For the first time since I had entered his service, the terrifying Don of Chicago looked vulnerable.
“The driver talked,” Luca said quietly, breaking the silence.
I looked up. “The man in the van?”
“He’s an ex-French Legionnaire named Mercier,” Luca explained, his voice chillingly cold. “He was paid two hundred thousand euros by an offshore dummy corporation registered in the Cayman Islands. The account belongs to Don Antonio Bellini. Vanessa’s father.”
My breath caught. “Her father was behind this?”
“Vanessa was the architect; her father provided the logistics,” Luca continued, swirling the whiskey in his glass. “The plan was brilliant in its cruelty. Once Lily was safely across international borders in that psychiatric facility, the Bellinis were going to leverage her location against me. They wanted forty percent of my shipping routes through the Great Lakes, plus complete control over our narcotics distribution in southern Illinois. If I refused, Lily would simply… disappear into the European foster system under a fabricated identity. I would have spent the rest of my life tearing the world apart, never finding her.”
“And Michael?” I asked hesitantly.
Luca’s face darkened, a shadow passing over his features that sent a shiver down my spine. “My brother is in the cellar. He took fifty thousand dollars to look the other way and provide the estate’s security patrol schedules to Mercier’s team. He claims he didn't know they were taking Lily permanently. He claims Vanessa told him it was just a temporary retreat to ‘straighten her out.’”
Luca set his glass down on the table with a firm click.
“He lied,” Luca said. “I found the wire transfer on his encrypted phone. He knew exactly where she was going.”
A soft knock interrupted us.
Daniel cracked the door open, his expression grim. “Boss. Antonio Bellini is on the secure line. He knows the transport failed. He’s demanding to speak with you.”
Luca didn't stand immediately. He looked down at me, his gaze lingering on my pale face.
“Rest, Hannah,” he whispered, his tone softer than I had ever heard it. “The security detail outside this door answers only to me. You and Lily are the safest people on this continent right now.”
He stood, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt, the cold, lethal Don slipping back over him like a tailored suit of armor.
May you like
“Daniel,” Luca said as he walked toward the door. “Tell the guards in the cellar to leave the lights on for Michael. Let him sweat. I’ll deal with the Bellinis first.”
***
