Chapter 4 - THE TORN PHOTOGRAPH
The photograph lay on the marble floor like a live grenade.
The maid and the bastard. Tonight.
The red ink slashed violently across Lily’s smiling face in the picture. The elegant, cursive handwriting was unmistakable. Every morning for six months, I had delivered Isabella’s breakfast trays, complete with the daily menu cards she filled out herself. I knew the loop of her Ms and the sharp slant of her Ts.
Isabella had known about Lily. She had known who we really were, long before the incident with the gold button this morning.
Alessandro stared down at the photo, his entire body going terrifyingly still. The kind of stillness that precedes a massacre.
“Where did you get this, Marco?” Alessandro asked. His voice was a flat, dead calm that sent a shiver down my spine.
Marco stepped further into the foyer, his wet leather shoes squeaking faintly against the stone. He didn't look like a man caught in a lie; he looked exhausted, carrying a weight that had finally broken his back.
“I pulled it off the body of a Romano hitman three hours ago,” Marco said quietly. “Down by the river docks. He was carrying a suppressed weapon and a layout of the estate’s kitchen entrance. The entrance Rosa uses every morning.”
My stomach bottomed out. I clutched Lily so tightly she whined in protest, burying her face into my neck. Tonight. Isabella wasn't just trying to fire me. She had ordered us killed tonight, under the cover of the wedding rehearsal chaos.
“You killed a Romano soldier on my territory without my authorization?” Alessandro asked, though his eyes never left the red ink on the photograph.
“I had to, Boss,” Marco replied, his jaw tight. “I’ve been tracking Isabella’s private communications for two months. She’s been smuggling burner phones into the estate. When I intercepted a message about a hit on a domestic worker, I started tailing Rosa and the kid on their days off. That’s why the little girl recognizes me from the park. I was running counter-surveillance.”
I stared at Marco, my mind reeling. The "candy man" who always sat on the green bench near the swings, reading a newspaper and occasionally tossing a butterscotch candy near the sandbox for Lily to find. He hadn't been a creepy stranger. He had been Alessandro’s deadliest weapon, quietly keeping us alive.
“Why didn't you come to me?” Alessandro demanded, finally looking up. The betrayal in his eyes was agonizing. First his father, then his butler, and now his underboss. Every man he trusted had kept the existence of his family a secret.
“Because if I told you that your fiancée was plotting to murder a maid and a child, you would have executed Isabella on the spot,” Marco said, unblinking. “And if Isabella Romano dies on Moretti soil, Vincent Romano will unleash a bloodbath that would wipe out half the families on the East Coast. You know this, Alessandro. The wedding was supposed to prevent a war. Instead, it was a Trojan horse.”
Marco walked forward and pointed a scarred finger at the photograph. “Isabella didn't arrange this hit to secure her marriage to you. She arranged it to force you to break the engagement.”
Alessandro frowned, the lethal calculation returning to his eyes. “Explain.”
“If you found Rosa and your daughter dead in your own kitchen tonight, Isabella knew you would go insane,” Marco said. “She knew you would blame her father’s men. You would break the treaty. You would start the war yourself. And Isabella would be the innocent victim, caught in the crossfire, free to leave the estate and run away.”
“Run away with who?” Alessandro asked.
“That’s what I haven't figured out yet,” Marco admitted. “But someone is pulling her strings. Someone who wants the Moretti and Romano families to destroy each other.”
A heavy, suffocating dread settled over the foyer. The game was so much bigger than a jealous fiancée. Lily and I were just pawns—expendable collateral to ignite a mafia war.
“Mr. Moretti!”
A young security guard burst through the front doors, rain soaking his uniform. He was breathing hard, his eyes wide with panic.
“Sir, a convoy of four black SUVs just breached the outer perimeter,” the guard reported frantically. “It’s Vincent Romano. He’s two hours early for the rehearsal dinner. He has twenty heavily armed men with him, and they are demanding the gates be opened.”
Alessandro’s face turned into a mask of pure, violent resolve. He didn't panic. He didn't shout. He simply transformed into the Don of the Moretti family.
“Marco,” Alessandro ordered. “Lock down the armory. Put shooters on the second-floor balconies. Do not fire unless fired upon, but nobody gets past the front steps.”
“Yes, Boss,” Marco nodded, drawing his weapon and sprinting toward the security wing.
Alessandro turned to the butler. “Bruno, take Rosa and Lily to my mother’s old suite on the third floor. The walls are reinforced steel. Lock them inside and do not open the door for anyone except me.”
“Alessandro, no!” I cried, grabbing his arm as he turned away. The fear of losing him—again, but this time forever—overrode all my logic. “If Vincent knows about the hit, if he knows Isabella’s plan, he’s coming here to finish the job!”
Alessandro looked down at my hand gripping his sleeve. His expression softened for a fraction of a second, an ocean of regret and fierce love passing between us. He reached out and gently stroked Lily’s dark curls one last time.
“No one is going to touch you, Rosa,” he whispered, his voice vibrating with an absolute vow. “I failed to protect you four years ago. I will burn this entire world to ash before I let them take you from me today.”
He pulled his own heavy black handgun from his waistband, the metal gleaming coldly in the chandelier light.
“Go with Bruno,” Alessandro commanded.
I held Lily tight and followed the old butler up the grand staircase. Halfway up, I looked back. Alessandro was walking straight toward the massive front doors, alone, preparing to face an army.
We hurried down the long, shadowed corridors of the second floor, bypassing the main bedrooms, heading toward the hidden stairwell that led to Elena Moretti’s private suite.
Suddenly, a door burst open just ahead of us.
Isabella stepped out into the hallway.
She wasn't wearing her silk robe anymore. She was dressed in dark travel clothes, a heavy duffel bag slung over her shoulder. And in her trembling right hand, she held a silver, pearl-handled revolver, pointed directly at my chest.
“Stop right there,” Isabella ordered, her pale eyes wide and frantic.
Bruno immediately stepped in front of me, shielding Lily and me with his frail body. “Miss Romano, put the weapon down. Your father is at the gates.”
“I know he is!” Isabella cried, a hysterical edge to her voice. Tears were streaming down her face, ruining her perfect makeup. “Do you think I want him here? Do you think I want any of this?”
“You ordered my daughter killed!” I screamed, stepping out from behind Bruno, the maternal rage finally eclipsing my terror. “You wrote on that photograph!”
Isabella let out a broken, agonizing sob. She lowered the gun slightly, her hands shaking violently.
“I didn't order the hit on you, Rosa,” Isabella wept, her voice cracking in pure despair. “I wrote on that photograph to warn Marco! I deliberately left it where his men would find it so they would intercept the assassin!”
I froze. “What?”
Isabella reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a heavy, blood-red silk scarf. She threw it onto the floor between us.
May you like
It was the signature calling card of the Romano hitmen.
“My father isn't here to start a war with Alessandro,” Isabella whispered, trembling in abject terror. “He found out I’m pregnant by one of his own bodyguards. He’s here to kill me.”
