Chapter 3 - A Debt of Blood
The name hung in the vaulted dining room like a gunshot.
I looked up at Luca, my heart hammering against my ribs. My father had passed away eight years ago when I was twenty. He had always been a quiet, humble mechanic who worked long hours in a warehouse district garage, coming home with grease under his fingernails and exhaustion etched deep into his forehead. He never spoke about organized crime. He never spoke about the Moretti family.
"You don't know who Gabriel was," Luca said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on my arms stand up. "Because you only care about credit cards and magazine covers. But every soldier in this city knows."
Luca turned his gaze toward me, his dark eyes softening by a fraction.
"Twelve years ago," Luca explained, never taking his eyes off Vanessa, "my father and I were ambushed outside the North Terminal. A rival faction had six shooters pinned on our vehicle. Gabriel Vance was driving the armored transport behind us. When my car caught fire, Gabriel pulled me out of the burning wreckage with his bare hands. He took three bullets in the spine doing it."
Vanessa scoffed, though her hands trembled as she clutched her silk clutch. "So? You paid him, didn't you? That's what people like him are for! You pay them off and move on!"
"You cannot buy the life of a man who willingly bleeds for you," Luca snarled, slamming his fist onto the mahogany so hard the crystal water goblets shattered on the floor.
Vanessa jumped back, letting out a shriek.
"Gabriel Vance gave up the use of his legs so that I could sit at the head of this table," Luca said, his chest rising and falling with controlled rage. "When he was dying in the hospital, he asked me for one thing. Not money. Not power. He asked me to ensure his daughter would always have an honest living, a safe roof over her head, and the protection of the Moretti coat of arms if danger ever knocked at her door."
My throat closed up. Tears spilled over my eyelashes.
All those years... after Dad died, job offers had magically appeared for me. My apartment rent had somehow been subsidized under a 'city renewal grant.' When my husband walked out on me the moment I announced my pregnancy, my hospital bills had been anonymously cleared by a charitable trust.
It hadn't been luck. It had been Luca.
"I promised her father she would be protected," Luca said coldly, stepping toward Vanessa until she backed straight into the wall. "And under my own roof, the woman wearing my engagement ring degraded her, starved her infant child, and used my name to terrorize loyal employees who have served this family longer than you've been alive."
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Vanessa shook her head, tears of indignation welling in her eyes. "You're humiliating me! Over a maid! My father is Senator Bellini—you cannot treat me like this! You need our political alliance!"
"I need men with honor," Luca replied, reaching out and wrapping his fingers around Vanessa's wrist. Without hesitation, he slid the seven-carat emerald-cut diamond ring from her finger. "I don't need a spoiled sociopath poisoning my house."
