Chapter 8 - THE ROSARY BEADS
“What did the message say?” Luca demanded, stepping toward me.
I handed him the phone.
He read Mrs. Carter’s text. His jaw clenched.
“She framed him,” I said, looking at Daniel. “While we were at the engagement dinner, she must have planted something.”
Daniel cursed loudly.
“The study,” he realized. “When you sent her upstairs to check on the ‘pantry accident,’ Boss. She had ten minutes alone before she came back down.”
Luca turned to Vanessa, who was currently being pushed into the back of a security van.
She was smiling again.
“Did you really think I didn’t have a contingency plan?” Vanessa called out, laughing over the rain. “I planted the murder weapon from the Romano hit in your desk drawer, Luca! The cops have it by now. You’re going away for life!”
Luca’s expression didn’t change.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t panic.
He simply walked over to the van, reached into Vanessa’s coat pocket, and pulled something out.
A string of wooden rosary beads.
Vanessa’s face dropped.
“Give those back!” she shrieked.
Luca held the beads up in the rain.
“You’re a very careful woman, Vanessa,” he said calmly. “You plan everything. But you have one fatal flaw. You keep souvenirs.”
He turned to Daniel.
“These beads belong to my father. They went missing the night he was murdered.”
Vanessa went completely pale.
“That’s a lie!” she screamed.
“Is it?” Luca asked. “Because I have a feeling if we dust these beads, we won’t find my father’s prints. We’ll find Mercer’s. You hired him to kill the old man, didn’t you? And you kept the beads as a trophy.”
Vanessa thrashed against the zip-ties.
“You can’t prove anything!”
“I don’t need to,” Luca said coldly. “I’m going to hand Mercer over to the police. He’s bleeding, terrified, and facing a kidnapping charge. He’ll take a plea deal in five minutes and give you up for the murder.”
He slammed the van door shut, cutting off her screams.
He walked back to Daniel.
“Take her to the precinct. Leave her chained to the front steps with the beads in her pocket. Drop Mercer off at the hospital with a bow on his head. Let the cops figure out the rest.”
Daniel nodded. “And the warrant for you?”
“It won’t hold. Once Mercer confesses to planting the gun to frame me, the charges will evaporate.”
Luca looked at Elena and his son.
“Get them to the safe house.”
As the SUVs peeled out of the shipyard, leaving only Luca’s Maserati and the smoking wreckage behind, the adrenaline finally left my body.
My knees buckled.
Luca caught me before I hit the ground.
His strong arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me tight against his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. “I’ve got you, Olivia.”
I closed my eyes, burying my face in his shirt.
For the first time in nine months, I didn’t feel like a maid. I didn’t feel poor, or invisible, or scared.
I felt safe.
He lifted me into the passenger seat of the Maserati, buckling me in as gently as if I were made of glass.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
“Home,” he said.
Not the mansion. Not the crime scene.
He drove us to a private hotel downtown, one owned by a legitimate branch of his company.
He carried me up to the penthouse himself.
He sat me on the edge of the massive king bed and went into the bathroom. He returned a moment later with a warm, damp towel.
Very gently, he began to clean the mud and rain from my face.
He carefully avoided the purple bruise on my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes locked onto the swelling. “I let her into my house. I let her hurt you.”
“You didn’t know,” I said softly.
He dropped the towel and cupped my face with both hands.
“I know now,” he said, his voice fierce. “I know who is loyal to me. And I know who I care about.”
He leaned in.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time, Luca kissed me.
It wasn’t rough or demanding. It was soft, grateful, and entirely genuine.
May you like
When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine.
“Tomorrow, everything changes,” he promised.
