Chapter 4 - The Wrath of the Don: Erasing a Stepmother's Debt in Cold Blood
Noon came and went. I did not leave the estate.
The choice had been no choice at all. It was the illusion of free will offered by a predator who had already cornered his prey. By two o'clock in the afternoon, a team of high-end tailors and jewelers had arrived at the mansion, their faces pale and their voices hushed, measuring my waist, my shoulders, and the circumference of my left ring finger under the watchful, terrifying eye of Enzo.
By four o'clock, a platinum band encrusted with a flawless, emerald-cut five-carat diamond rested heavily on my finger. It felt less like a piece of jewelry and more like a miniature handcuff.
“It suits you,” Kian’s voice cut through the quiet of the private sitting room.
I looked up. He was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, adjusting a silver watch over his wrist. There was a cold, predatory energy rolling off him, sharper and darker than earlier that morning.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“Leaving? Where?” I pulled the thick cashmere coat Mrs. Higgins had provided tighter around my chest. “Zayn said we were having dinner at six.”
“Zayn is having dinner with his tutor,” Kian replied, walking toward the grand foyer. “You and I have business in the city. A loose thread requires burning.”
The dread that settled into my stomach was icy and immediate.
The ride into Brooklyn was dead silent. Rain lashed against the reinforced glass of the SUV, blurring the neon signs of the outer boroughs into bloody streaks of light. Kian sat beside me, reviewing documents on a sleek tablet, completely unbothered by the tension radiating from my body. His hand rested casually on the leather seat between us—large, scarred across the knuckles, and radiating an impossible heat.
The SUV didn't stop at an upscale restaurant. It pulled into an abandoned industrial gravel yard in Gowanus, parking behind an rusted shipping warehouse.
Enzo opened Kian’s door. “They’re inside, Boss.”
“Stay in the car,” Kian said to me, not looking back as he stepped out into the drizzle.
“No,” I blurted out, my hand darting forward before my brain could stop me. My fingers caught the sleeve of his expensive wool coat.
Kian stopped. He turned slowly, looking down at where my small, pale hand gripped his sleeve. It was an act of insubordination that probably would have gotten any soldier executed on the spot. But instead of anger, a flicker of dark amusement danced in his gray eyes.
“You wish to accompany me, little bride?” he murmured.
“I want to know what you’re doing,” I said, swallowing down the lump of terror in my throat. “If my name is tied to yours now, I won't hide in the dark like a frightened child.”
A slow, terrifying smile spread across Kian’s face. “Careful, Aurora. Courage in a mafia house often looks identical to a death wish.” He stepped back, offering his arm. “Come, then. Witness what your new surname means.”
Inside the warehouse, the air was rancid with stagnant water, rust, and the metallic tang of fresh blood.
Under the glare of a single buzzing halogen lamp hung from an iron rafter, two people were tied to heavy wooden chairs.
Regina. And Tony Delgado.
Tony—a man who had terrorized three neighborhoods and sent thugs to beat my father when his payments lagged—was barely recognizable. His expensive leather jacket was torn, his left eye swollen completely shut, and his breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. Regina was screaming through a strip of duct tape, her mascara running in black rivers down her hysterically contorted face.
Around them stood six Moretti soldiers, their submachine guns resting casually against their chests.
When Kian stepped into the light, leading me by the hand, the silence that fell over the room was absolute. Even Regina stopped thrashing, her bloodshot eyes bulging as she saw me draped in cashmere, standing beside the devil himself.
“Don Moretti,” Tony wheezed, spitting a mouthful of red onto the concrete. “I didn't... I didn't know the girl was under your flag. Regina told me she was an orphan! She owed the book! I was just collecting what was legally mine!”
Kian didn't look at Tony. He walked over to a steel folding table, picked up a pair of pristine black leather gloves, and slowly worked them onto his fingers, smoothing the leather over each knuckle with chilling precision.
“Legally,” Kian repeated, tasting the word like sour wine. “You run a loan-sharking ring out of a chop shop, Delgado. You do not speak to me of legality.”
He turned to Regina, nodding to Enzo, who ripped the tape off her mouth with a brutal jerk.
“Aurora! Aurora, baby, please!” Regina shrieked immediately, straining against the ropes. “Tell him! I raised you! I took you in when your mother died! I fed you! You can't let these monsters kill me! Tell him to let me go!”
I stood frozen. Memories flooded my skull: Regina locking me in the unheated pantry when I was fifteen; Regina forging my dead father’s signature while his body was still at the morgue; Regina laughing two nights ago as Tony's man slammed my face against the subway tiles.
“You sold me,” I whispered, the words echoing through the cavernous warehouse. “You took fifty thousand dollars to hand me over to human traffickers.”
“I was desperate!” she wailed. “Family forgives, Aurora! We’re blood!”
“You are not her blood,” Kian’s voice dropped into the room like a guillotine.
He stepped directly into Regina’s personal space. The sheer size of him blotted out the light, casting her completely into his shadow.
“You touched what belongs to the Moretti family,” Kian said softly. “You bruised the hands that cooked for my son. You bled the lips that promised him comfort. In my world, that is not a financial debt. That is an act of war.”
Kian glanced sideways at Enzo. “Tony Delgado leaves New York tonight. Strip his territory, seize his assets, and put him on a freighter to South America. If he ever sets foot on American soil again, skin him.”
“Yes, Don Moretti.”
Tony began to weep with pathetic gratitude. “Thank you, Don Moretti! Thank you—!”
“As for this creature,” Kian continued, his eyes remaining fixed on Regina, whose face turned gray with absolute horror. “She likes games of chance. Let us see how she fares against the current of the East River with fifty thousand dollars in copper pennies tied to her ankles.”
“No! No! Aurora, please! God, Aurora, stop him!” Regina screamed, thrashing wildly as two guards stepped forward with heavy burlap sacks.
Terror seized my lungs. I hated Regina. I despised her with every fiber of my soul. But watching a murder carried out in front of me felt like a chasm opening beneath my feet, threatening to pull my humanity down into the dark.
“Kian, wait!” I cried out.
Every man in the room froze. Kian’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing with lethal intensity. Nobody interrupted Don Moretti. Nobody questioned his sentences.
I stepped forward, my hands trembling as I met his glacial glare. “Don't kill her.”
A dangerous silence hung in the air. Kian walked toward me, his towering frame casting a shadow over my face. “She sold you like cattle, Aurora. She deserves the dark.”
“I know what she deserves,” I said, my voice shaking but holding firm. “She deserves prison. She deserves to rot in a federal cell for fraud, embezzlement, and human trafficking. If you drown her in a river, you become what she said you were. A monster.” I swallowed hard, looking him straight in the eyes. “And you promised Zayn you were a knight.”
The mention of Zayn struck him like a physical blow.
For five agonizing seconds, Kian Moretti didn't breathe. His eyes searched mine, looking for weakness, looking for deceit, finding only raw, stubborn defiance. The darkness in his face shifted, subtly, into something profoundly intrigued.
Slowly, Kian peeled off his leather gloves and tossed them onto the table.
“Enzo,” he commanded, never breaking eye contact with me. “Hand the fraud files to District Attorney Vance’s task force. Ensure she receives maximum sentencing at Bedford Hills without the possibility of parole. If she ever sees daylight before her seventieth birthday, fire the prosecutor.”
“Understood, Boss.”
May you like
Kian reached out, his bare fingers sliding beneath my chin, tilting my face upward until my breath mingled with his.
“You have a soft heart, Miss Vance,” he murmured, his thumb brushing dangerously close to my lower lip. “In this house, that heart will either be your ruin... or my salvation.”
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