Chapter 9 - HEALING AND REVELATIONS
“Get that filthy animal out of here!”
Vanessa Bellini’s voice sliced through the string quartet’s gentle melody like broken glass. I stood frozen in the arched doorway of Luca Moretti’s grand dining room, my arms trembling under the dead weight of a seventy-pound German shepherd. Rainwater dripped from the dog's graying muzzle, soaking into the starched black cotton of my housekeeping uniform and pooling onto the hand-laid Carrara marble.
His hind legs were shaking with exhaustion. Twenty-six elite guests—judges, councilmen, and syndicate lieutenants in bespoke tuxedos—froze with silver forks mid-air, staring at me as if an asylum patient had broken into the ballroom.
Vanessa stood at the head of the banquet table beside Luca. She wore an emerald-cut diamond ring on her left hand and a crimson silk gown that hugged every curve of her calculated perfection. Her face was contorted in sheer disgust.
“You stupid little maid!” Vanessa hissed, marching across the polished floor with her manicured fingernails clenched into tight fists. “I told you to get rid of that creature! I gave you direct orders!”
I tightened my grip around the shepherd's wet ribcage. His breathing was labored, a dry rattle scraping against his chest. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I couldn't leave him out there.”
“Put him down and get off this property immediately! You’re fired!” Vanessa shrieked, pointing toward the servant's entrance. “Get security to throw her out into the street!”
The dining room erupted into hushed murmurs. But before any of the guards could take a single step, the heavy oak dining chair at the head of the table scraped violently against the stone floor.
“Emma.”
The voice was low, carrying a lethal gravity that instantly drained the room of all sound.
Luca Moretti stood tall. He was six-foot-three of tailored charcoal wool, razor-sharp cheekbones, and ice-blue eyes that had silenced the city of Chicago for a decade. He wasn't looking at Vanessa. He wasn't looking at his high-society guests. His stare was riveted to the trembling beast in my arms.
The crystal champagne flute slipped from Luca’s fingers, shattering across the polished floor with a sharp crack.
“Where did you find my dog?” Luca asked. His tone was barely above a whisper, but it carried a deadly chill.
My name is Emma Sullivan. I was twenty-eight years old, working twelve-hour shifts as a housekeeper at the Moretti estate to pay for my mother’s chemotherapy and my younger brother’s college tuition. In the eight months I had worked here, I had learned three unbreakable rules: never ask questions about the black sedans in the driveway, never touch the locked mahogany study on the third floor, and never disturb Bruno.
Bruno was twelve years old. He was the only creature in this fortress permitted to sleep on the four-thousand-dollar imported leather sofa. He had belonged to Luca’s late father, Don Roberto Moretti. Every single morning, no matter how brutal the syndicate business had been the night before, Luca spent fifteen minutes in the rain or sunshine sitting beside that old dog in the rose garden.
Yet Luca had been away in Milan for five days. And less than forty-eight hours after his jet touched down in Italy, Vanessa Bellini had gathered the staff to inform us that Bruno had suffered sudden cardiac arrest and was buried at an off-site veterinary cemetery.
It was an outright lie.
Two hours ago, while folding linens in the north wing, I heard a faint scratching behind the locked, rusting steel door of the abandoned maintenance garage behind the greenhouse. When I picked the corroded padlock with a bobby pin, I found Bruno lying in his own filth on a cold concrete floor beside an empty porcelain bowl. His muzzle was dry, his hips too weak to push himself upright.
When he smelled my apron, his tail thumped twice against the freezing floor.
Vanessa had caught me carrying water toward the garage. She had shoved a hundred-dollar bill into my collar, commanding me to wait until a private disposal van arrived.
I hadn't taken the money. Instead, I waited until the dinner party reached its peak, carried the dying hound across the storm-swept courtyard, and walked straight through the double doors of the dining hall.
“Emma, put him down!” Vanessa demanded again, her voice cracking as she reached out to grab my elbow.
“Do not touch her.” Luca didn’t shout, but Vanessa instantly yanked her arm back as though she had been burned.
Luca walked down the length of the dining room. His heavy polished oxfords crunched over the shattered glass.
“Bruno?” Luca whispered.
The old shepherd's ears twitched upward. A tiny whimper escaped his throat.
Then, before twenty-six of the most powerful people in the state, the undisputed boss of the Chicago outfit dropped to his knees on the wet, broken glass.
“Come here, old boy,” Luca breathed.
Bruno struggled out of my arms. His paws skidded against the slick floor, his weak hips giving out. But Luca caught him against his chest before he could hit the floor. The feared mobster buried his face deep into the wet, unwashed fur of his father’s companion. His shoulders trembled with an emotion none of these guests had ever witnessed.
When Luca finally raised his head, the tenderness in his eyes was replaced by pure murder. He looked up at his fiancée.
“You looked me in the eye,” Luca said softly, “and told me you buried him.”
Vanessa turned white as a sheet. “Luca, darling... it was a misunderstanding! The veterinarian told me he had rabies—or an infection! I wanted to protect the estate!”
“Which veterinarian, Vanessa?”
“The one... from the North Side!”
Luca turned his head toward me, still holding the panting dog against his chest. “Emma. Did a vet see him?”
“No, sir,” I said, looking straight into Vanessa's panicked gaze. “He was locked in the back garage without food or water. Ma'am said a disposal driver was coming tonight.”
Luca’s jaw clenched with enough force to crack bone. “Who removed his collar?”
I pulled the worn brown leather strap from my uniform pocket. The engraved brass plate bearing Don Roberto's initials was missing, pry marks scoring the torn leather.
“Emma,” Luca said, rising slowly to his feet while keeping one hand on Bruno’s head. “Take Bruno to my private study. Have Dr. Reynolds come immediately through the front gates. You are not fired.”
“Luca!” Vanessa cried out.
Before she could finish her sentence, the estate’s head of security, Marco, strode into the room, his radio crackling.
“Boss,” Marco said, ignoring the guests. “There's an unmarked van at the service gate. The driver says Mrs. Bellini paid him three thousand dollars in cash to haul away two crates from the back garage.”
Luca’s cold stare fixed on his fiancée. “Two crates? What second animal, Vanessa?”
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Vanessa’s fingers trembled so hard her wine glass clattered against her diamonds. “Luca... please. Promise me you won’t unlock the back room of that garage.”
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