Chapter 3 - THE COAT OF ASH AND GOLD
Nora shoved the Polaroid and the silver rosary deep into the pocket of her apron and kicked the floorboard back into place just as the heavy oak door swung open.
Lorenzo Moretti filled the doorway. Up close, he was even more intimidating than he had been in the foyer. He had removed his jacket, leaving a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms scarred near the knuckles. His gray eyes swept the room like searchlights—taking in the roaring fireplace, the smell of toasted garlic and minestrone still lingering in the air, and finally, Nora, kneeling on the stone hearth with soot smudged across her pale cheek.
"I told Mrs. Gable the floor was to be cleared," Lorenzo said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Who are you?"
Nora tried to stand, using the edge of the mantle for support, her swollen belly heavy and aching. "I—I’m Nora, sir. One of the housemaids. I was just finishing the fire."
Lorenzo stepped into the room, his gaze dropping to her six-month pregnancy, then rising to the dark purple bruises circling her thin wrists. Something flickered behind his cold gray eyes—not quite pity, but a sharp, calculating anger.
Then he looked at his father.
For the first time in three years, Giovanni was not slumped in the dark smelling of stale sweat and neglect. His silver hair was neatly combed. His face was clean-shaven. The room was warm, and the chair was positioned by the window where the last purple light of the blizzard reflected off the snow.
Lorenzo walked slowly toward the wheelchair. He noticed the singed gray heated blanket resting on the stool beside the chair, right next to an empty bowl that still held traces of rich red soup.
"Mrs. Gable told me the private nurse from Manhattan has been tending him daily," Lorenzo said softly, never taking his eyes off his father. "Yet the nurse’s logs in my study weren't signed this week. And my father hates lavender air freshener, which someone sprayed by the door five minutes ago to cover up kitchen soup."
He turned slowly to face Nora. "Look at me when I speak to you."
Nora forced her chin up, though her knees felt like water. If this man was the L.M. on that photograph, he had done something to Brody. He might have killed the father of her child. Yet as she looked at Lorenzo’s face, she saw the unmistakable grief tightening his jaw as he stared at the frail old man.
"The nurse hasn't been here since I started three months ago, Mr. Moretti," Nora said, her voice trembling but clear. "If I get fired for saying so, then I get fired. Your father was left in the dark. The radiator in this room is broken, so I keep the fireplace lit. And he likes the minestrone better than the oatmeal they send up."
Silence stretched across the room, broken only by the crackle of the birch logs and the howling wind against the glass.
Lorenzo didn't yell. He walked over to the radiator, placed his palm against the ice-cold iron pipes, and closed his eyes for three seconds. When he opened them, a terrifying calm had settled over his features.
Then, from the wheelchair, a sound broke the quiet.
It was a low, raspy grunt from Giovanni’s throat.
Lorenzo spun around, his breath catching. "Papa?"
Giovanni’s eyes didn't look at his son. They looked directly at Nora, who was swaying on her feet as the room suddenly tilted around her. Forty-eight hours of scrubbing stone stairs on anempty stomach had finally caught up with her. A white-hot pain sliced across her lower abdomen, and her knees buckled.
She didn't hit the floor.
Lorenzo moved with shocking speed, catching her before her stomach could strike the stone hearth. He lifted her effortlessly into his arms, startled by how light she was despite the baby she carried.
"She’s burning up, and her hands are bleeding," Lorenzo muttered, looking down at her raw, cracked knuckles. He carried her not toward the servants' quarters, but out into the main hallway, barking orders at the two bodyguards stationed by the stairs. "Get Dr. Russo up here from the guest wing. And put her in the rose suite next to my study."
Halfway down the hall, Mrs. Gable hurried around the corner, holding a silk coverlet. She froze at the sight of the ruthless Mafia boss carrying the lowest maid in the house like fragile glass.
"Mr. Moretti! What happened? That clumsy girl—"
"Give me the keys to the east wing and the staff ledger, Mrs. Gable," Lorenzo said without stopping, his voice colder than the blizzard outside. "And do not leave this floor."
Inside the luxurious rose suite, Lorenzo laid Nora gently onto a four-poster bed and pulled off his cashmere vest to drape over her shivering shoulders. As he adjusted her apron to keep her warm, the Polaroid photograph slipped halfway out of her pocket.
Nora’s eyes fluttered open just as Lorenzo’s fingers brushed the edge of the photo. She grabbed his wrist in panic, pulling the picture back, but a gold cufflink tore loose from his shirt sleeve in the struggle—a cufflink engraved with the exact same lion-and-dagger crest as the ring in her pocket, except the initials on his cufflink weren't L.M.
They were D.M.
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"Who is L.M.?" Nora whispered weakly, staring up into his startled gray eyes. "If your name is Lorenzo... why are your initials D.M.?"
Lorenzo went completely still, his hand freezing over hers. "Because Lorenzo is my middle name," he said quietly. "My first name is Dante. The only person in this family with the initials L.M. was my mother, Lucia Moretti—and she died in a car crash the same night my father had his stroke."
