Chapter 4 - The Shattered SilenceEmily’s eyes filled instantly, spilling over with hot, thick tears that carved clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. Her lips quivered as she looked at the man who had raised her, protected her, and loved her fiercely since her mother’s death.
“Hi, Dad,” she choked out.
Luca didn't hesitate. He started walking—not with the measured, terrifying grace of a crime boss moving through a room of rivals, but with the frantic, stumbling gait of a man running toward a fire. He crossed the twenty-foot expanse of open marble between the head table and the entrance in seconds.
Then he stopped a few feet away, as if an invisible wall had suddenly materialized between them.
His dark eyes searched her face, mapping every line of exhaustion, every tear, before dropping downward once again to her stomach. His chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged breaths.
When he spoke, his voice was barely audible over the hum of the crystal chandeliers.
“You’re having a baby?”
Emily started crying in earnest now, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as a sob broke free from her chest. “I’m sorry,” she wept.
Luca looked stunned, as if someone had driven a fist straight into his solar plexus. But beneath the shock, a deep, crushing hurt settled into the crags of his face.
“How far along are you?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Almost… almost six months.”
Luca’s face emptied of color entirely. He swayed slightly on his feet, his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides. “Six months?”
She nodded miserably. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not telling you sooner.”
Luca stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. The muscles in his jaw ticked violently. “You didn't tell me.”
“I tried,” Emily sobbed, shaking her head. “God, Dad, I tried so hard.”
“How many times?”
Emily wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her sleeve, her voice trembling. “I don't know… twenty? Thirty times?”
Luca’s head slowly turned away from his daughter. His dark, dangerous gaze settled on the woman standing frozen by the door in her red silk dress.
“Vanessa,” he called out, his voice dropping an octave into a register so cold it made my blood run backward.
Vanessa took a tiny, involuntary step away from us, her smile completely gone. “Luca, sweetheart, let’s not do this here, in front of all these people—cultureless gossip mongers—we can discuss this in the study—”
He raised one heavy hand, palm out.
Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks.
Luca looked back at his fiancée, his eyes narrowing to thin, dark slits. “You answered her calls?”
Vanessa swallowed hard, her throat visibly working. “Sometimes.”
“And told her what?”
“That you were busy,” Vanessa whispered, her voice losing its polished veneer.
Emily shook her head fiercely, stepping closer to her father. “No. That’s a lie.”
The entire room of thirty powerful guests held their collective breath. Nobody dared to shift in their seats.
Emily pointed a trembling finger at Vanessa. “She didn't just say you were busy. She told me you didn't want to talk to me at all.”
Luca looked as though someone had taken a sledgehammer directly to his chest. He staggered back half a step, his breath catching in his throat. “Ashamed… of you?”
“She said,” Emily choked out, her voice breaking on every syllable, “you didn't want people knowing your unmarried daughter was pregnant while you were planning a high-profile wedding to a member of the city’s elite.”
Vanessa squeezed her eyes shut for a fraction of a second, opening them to project pure, icy defiance. “Luca, I was trying to protect tonight! I was trying to protect your reputation, your business associates, your standing in the commission!”
Luca finally turned his full, terrifying attention back to the woman he was supposed to marry in less than two hours.
“From my grandchild?” he asked, his voice dangerously, unnaturally calm.
“You know how people talk,” Vanessa defended herself, stepping up her rhetoric. “The tabloids, the board members, the councilmen sitting right over there—they love a scandal. I was managing the optics.”
“I don’t care about the optics,” Luca said softly.
May you like
“You should.”
“No,” Luca said, taking a step closer to Vanessa until towers of authority loomed over her. “I should have known my daughter was becoming a mother. That is the only thing in this room that matters.”
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