Chapter 1 - The Envelope in the Shadows
My fingers dug into Elena’s wrist, the pressure enough to bruise steel, but she didn't flinch. Her dark eyes remained steady, holding a depth of sorrow and steel that matched my own. In the silent room, the only sound was Matteo’s soft, rhythmic breathing as he chewed another small bite of the red velvet cake, his thumb tracing the worn velvet ear of his lion toy.
"Speak," I growled, my voice dropping into the icy register that usually made grown men in the Chicago underworld drop to their knees. "Speak right now, or I swear to God, you will never leave this room."
"Luca..." Elena said softly, using my first name without hesitation—a breach of decorum that would have earned anyone else a death sentence in the Moretti household. "Look at your son. Look at his face. Do you want to spend the time he has left filling this room with violence?"
I glanced down at Matteo. His pale cheeks had a faint flush of color for the first time in three months. He was looking at the cake, then at Elena, and then at me with wide, curious eyes. Slowly, reluctantly, I loosened my grip on her wrist. Red marks left an imprint against her pale skin, but she merely smoothed down the sleeve of her simple black dress.
"In my office. Now," I commanded, stepping back.
I motioned to Marco, my head of security, who was standing in the doorway with his hand resting on the grip of his holstered Sig Sauer. "Watch Matteo with your life. No one enters. No one leaves."
I led Elena down the grand mahogany hallway of the estate, past the oil paintings of Moretti ancestors who had ruled Chicago with blood and iron. I shoved open the heavy oak doors of my study, walked straight to my desk, and pointed at the leather chair across from me.
"Sit."
Elena remained standing, her hands folded neatly in front of her. "I prefer to stand, Mr. Moretti."
I pulled the sealed envelope from my coat pocket and laid it on the polished cherrywood desk between us. Sofia's handwriting stared up at me—the elegant, sweeping cursive I had fallen in love with twelve years ago at a gallery in Florence. It was preserved perfectly on ivory cardstock, untarnished by the two years of dust that had accumulated since the night she was gunned down outside our lake house.
"Sofia's private safe requires a biometric thumbprint and a six-digit code that only she and I knew," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "The recipe for that cake was in that safe. The letter was supposed to be in that safe. How do you have them?"
"Sofia gave them to me three days before she died," Elena said quietly.
A heavy silence settled over the room. I felt the air leave my lungs as if I’d taken a physical blow to the chest.
"You're lying," I snarled. "Sofia didn't know you. You were hired through an agency four days ago."
"I was hired four days ago because I waited two years for Matteo’s condition to reach the exact threshold Sofia predicted," Elena replied, reaching into her pocket.
Instantly, I unholstered my pistol and aimed it directly between her eyes. The metallic click of the hammer cocking echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.
Elena didn't blink. She slowly pulled out a worn silver locket attached to a delicate chain and laid it gently on the desk next to the envelope.
My hand trembled slightly on the grip of the gun.
It was Sofia’s locket—the one containing a picture of her mother that had gone missing from the crime scene the night she died. We had assumed the killer took it.
"Sofia knew her family was toxic, Luca," Elena spoke softly, her voice cutting through my rising panic. "She knew that marry into the Moretti syndicate meant stepping onto a chessboard where every piece was waiting to sacrifice her. But she didn't fear you. She feared the people sitting at your own table."
May you like
"Which people?" I demanded, the barrel of my gun remaining locked on her forehead.
"Open the letter," Elena said, nodding toward the ivory envelope. "She didn't write it for me to explain. She wrote it for you when you were backed into a corner, when you had exhausted every medical expert, every bribe, and every threat. She knew Matteo's heart condition wasn't genetic, Luca. She knew he was being poisoned."
