Chapter 5 - THE CRADLE OF SECRETS
Nora didn't scream. Years of surviving on the streets of New York before meeting Brody had taught her one vital instinct: when cornered by a predator, never waste breath on a cry for help.
As Mrs. Gable lunged toward the bed with the syringe, Nora grabbed the heavy porcelain mug of hot broth Dr. Russo had left on the nightstand and hurled it directly into the housekeeper’s face.
Mrs. Gable shrieked, clutching her scalded cheek as the syringe clattered across the hardwood floor.
Despite the cramp tearing through her side, Nora rolled off the opposite side of the four-poster bed, clutching the ledger and the rosary to her chest. She didn't run for the main hallway door—Mrs. Gable was blocking the path. Instead, Nora bolted straight into the narrow servants' passage behind the vanity that Mrs. Gable had just used.
She slammed the wooden panel latch shut from the inside, plunging herself into pitch darkness, and began climbing the narrow, dusty maintenance stairs that ran between the walls of the old mansion.
Below her, she heard Mrs. Gable’s frantic footsteps retreating—not chasing her, because someone had heard the crash from the hallway.
"Nora?" Dante’s deep voice echoed muffled through the thick plaster walls of the rose suite below. "What happened in here? Where is she?"
Nora pressed her forehead against the cold wooden steps, gasping for air. She wanted to pound on the wall and call out to Dante, to hand him the ledger and tell him everything.
She carries the bloodline you asked for.
Those words from Brody’s promissory note froze her hand in mid-air. What if Dante already knew? What if the ruthless Mafia boss who desperately needed an heir for his empire was the one who had paid Mrs. Gable to bring a vulnerable pregnant woman into his fortress?
There was only one person in this entire house Nora knew she could trust with her life and her baby’s life.
She climbed the dark, cramped stairwell all the way to the east wing and pushed open the hidden linen closet door inside room 4B.
The room was quiet. A single lamp burned beside the fireplace, where a tall, muscular bodyguard in a black suit stood watch by the main door. Giovanni sat in his wheelchair near the hearth, a thick wool blanket now tucked securely around his legs—undoubtedly placed there by Dante before he left.
When Nora stumbled out of the linen closet, pale and barefoot with bandaged hands, the bodyguard reached instinctively for his holster, his eyes widening. "Whoa—ma'am! Mr. Moretti is looking everywhere for you! Everyone thinks you collapsed in the hallway!"
"Lock the door," Nora begged, staggering toward Giovanni’s chair. "Please. Are you loyal to Mr. Moretti, or to Mrs. Gable?"
The young guard frowned, lowering his hand from his weapon. "I’m Marco. Don Giovanni paid for my father’s heart surgery when I was ten years old. I answer only to the Moretti bloodline."
Nora dropped to her knees beside Giovanni’s wheelchair. The old man’s dark eyes locked onto hers, wide with urgent alarm. He looked down at the leather ledger clutched in her trembling hands, then up at Marco.
With a tremendous, agonizing effort that made the veins in his neck bulge, Giovanni raised his right hand and tapped his index finger twice against the lion-and-dagger crest on the arm of his robe. Then he pointed at the locked bottom drawer of his bedside mahogany chest.
"He wants me to break the lock," Marco breathed, stunned that the old Don had just moved his arm. "Boss... you can hear us?"
Giovanni blinked once—a firm, deliberate nod.
Marco drew a heavy steel combat knife from his belt, knelt beside the chest, and pried the brass lock open with a loud snap. Inside lay a velvet-lined wooden box containing a pair of tiny knitted pink baby booties, a silver locket, and a faded birth certificate from St. Jude’s Hospital in Manhattan, dated twenty-three years ago.
Marco handed the box to Nora.
With shaking fingers, Nora opened the silver locket. Inside was a tiny painted portrait of a dark-haired woman with warm brown eyes—eyes that looked exactly like the ones Nora saw in the mirror every morning.
Beneath the portrait was the birth certificate.
Child’s Name: Eleonora Elena Conti-Moretti. Father: Carmine Conti (Consigliere to Giovanni Moretti). Godfather & Legal Guardian: Giovanni Moretti.
Nora’s breath stopped completely. Her mother had died in a shelter fire when Nora was four years old, and all Nora had ever known was her shortened name and an old prayer card in her coat pocket.
She looked back at the gold signet ring on the silver rosary Giovanni had given her: To G.M. — Blood before empire. Keep her safe from the debts of the son. — C.V.
Not C.V. The worn etching was C.C.—Carmine Conti.
Her father had been Giovanni’s right-hand man, his closest friend. When her father died protecting the Moretti family twenty-three years ago, Giovanni had left a twenty-million-dollar trust fund in his will for his goddaughter, Eleonora, to be unlocked on her twenty-fourth birthday—or upon the birth of her first child.
If Nora died or disappeared before giving birth, the unclaimed trust fund reverted directly to the estate’s charitable foundation—the exact foundation Lydia Gable controlled and was looting!
Mrs. Gable hadn't brought Nora here to steal her baby for Dante. Mrs. Gable had tracked down the missing goddaughter through Brody, brought her to the isolated estate during the dead of winter, and planned to stage a fatal miscarriage or "accidental" fall down the stone stairs so she could embezzle the twenty-million-dollar inheritance before Giovanni or Dante ever realized who Nora was!
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Suddenly, the heavy oak door of room 4B rattled violently.
"Marco, open this door!" Mrs. Gable’s voice rang out from the corridor, backed by the click of weapons being drawn. Beside her stood two of the estate’s private security guards—men who had been on Mrs. Gable’s payroll for years. "Mr. Moretti’s orders! The maid stole jewelry from the rose suite and she’s unstable! Open the door or these men will shoot through the lock!"
