Chapter 3 - The Man at Luca’s Right HandLuca didn't shout when he discovered Dante was gone.
That would've frightened me less.
He stood in the middle of my bedroom, staring at the message written above my bed.
NEXT TIME, THE SCARF WON'T SAVE YOU.
Behind him, three security men waited for orders.
Luca spoke quietly.
"Find Dante Rossi."
Nobody moved fast enough.
Luca turned.
"Now."
They disappeared.
Marco examined the window.
"Locked from inside."
"The service entrance?" I asked.
"Alarmed."
"So how did someone get in?"
Marco looked toward Luca.
"Same way they got the sedative upstairs."
Someone still inside the mansion was helping them.
That realization changed everything.
Nobody trusted the cooks.
The guards watched one another.
Employees who had served the family for twenty years were searched before leaving rooms.
By sunrise, the mansion no longer felt like a home.
It felt like a building full of strangers pretending they weren't afraid.
But the thing I couldn't stop thinking about was the letter.
Trust Thomas Marlowe.
My father.
I remembered almost nothing about the day he'd died.
A police officer at our apartment.
My mother collapsing into a chair.
The words work accident.
Equipment failure.
Instant.
For eighteen years, that had been the story.
Now Antonio DeSantis's handwriting told me my father had been involved with one of New York's most powerful criminal families.
I found Luca alone in his study after sunrise.
The ledger lay open on his desk.
"Did you know him?"
Luca looked up.
"My father?"
"My father."
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Elena."
"Don't."
My voice came out sharper than I intended.
"Don't say my name like that and expect me to calm down."
He leaned back.
"I wasn't."
I walked toward the desk.
"Your father trusted mine."
"Apparently."
"He wrote my father's name in a letter he thought you'd read after his death."
"Yes."
"And nobody ever told me."
"I didn't know."
I searched his face.
Luca DeSantis could lie to men across negotiating tables without blinking.
But he'd never lied to me.
At least I didn't think he had.
"Then who did?"
The study door opened.
A woman's voice answered.
"I did."
We turned.
Isabella DeSantis stood in the doorway.
Luca's mother was sixty-one, elegant, silver streaking her dark hair.
I had met her twice.
She had always been kind to me.
Now she looked ten years older.
Luca stood.
"Mother."
She walked inside and closed the door.
"I should have told you years ago."
Luca stared at her.
"Told me what?"
Isabella looked at me.
"Thomas Marlowe worked for Antonio."
I couldn't speak.
She continued.
"Not directly. Officially, he worked for one of the family's construction companies."
"My mother said he was an accountant."
"He was."
"Why would an accountant know where criminal payments led?"
"Because Antonio asked him to find out."
I gripped the back of a chair.
Isabella walked toward me.
"Your father was very good with numbers. More importantly, he was honest."
I laughed once.
The sound came out broken.
"Honest men don't usually work for mafia families."
Pain crossed her face.
"No. They usually get trapped by them."
Luca said, "Start at the beginning."
So she did.
Fourteen years earlier, Antonio DeSantis had decided the family couldn't survive forever on fear.
Federal investigations were increasing.
Old alliances were collapsing.
He wanted to pull the family out of narcotics, extortion, and several other operations that had defined previous generations.
He wanted legitimate businesses.
Real estate.
Transportation.
Construction.
Hotels.
He expected resistance.
He didn't expect it from his own brother.
Matteo believed Antonio's plan would make the family weak.
But Antonio suspected something worse.
Money was disappearing.
Millions.
Someone was moving it through shell companies.
Antonio asked Thomas Marlowe to quietly follow the books.
My father discovered accounts connected to Matteo.
And something else.
Payments to men outside the family.
Men paid to solve problems permanently.
"Did my father know he was in danger?" I asked.
Isabella's eyes filled.
"Yes."
I sat.
"Then why didn't he take us and leave?"
"He tried."
My head snapped up.
"Three days before Antonio died, Thomas told him he was moving you and your mother out of New York."
My breathing stopped.
Isabella's next words almost didn't reach me.
"He never made it."
Luca walked toward his mother.
"What happened to Thomas?"
She looked at him.
"The same thing that happened to your father."
The room spun.
"No," I whispered.
"My father died in Queens."
"That's what your mother was told."
Isabella shook her head.
"Thomas disappeared the night Antonio died."
I stood too quickly.
The chair fell behind me.
"No."
"Elena—"
"No."
My father had died in a construction accident.
I had seen the closed casket.
I had watched my mother place a white rose on it.
"The casket was closed because—"
I stopped.
I suddenly remembered something.
My mother asking to see him.
My grandmother refusing.
A funeral director taking her aside.
Everyone saying the accident had been too severe.
I felt sick.
"What was in the coffin?"
Isabella whispered, "I don't know."
Luca came toward me.
I stepped away.
Not because I was afraid of him.
Because the entire room belonged to a world that had apparently swallowed my father before I even knew what the word mafia meant.
Luca stopped.
He understood.
"Why hide this?" he asked Isabella.
"Antonio made me promise that if anything happened, I'd keep Thomas's family away from ours."
"You let Elena walk into this house."
"I didn't know who she was at first."
I looked at her.
"At first?"
Silence.
Luca's expression changed.
"When did you know?"
"Four months ago."
"And you said nothing?"
"I wanted to protect her."
I laughed bitterly.
"Everyone keeps saying that right before admitting they lied to me."
Isabella closed her eyes.
I turned toward the window.
That was when Marco entered.
He was holding something.
A file.
"We found this in Dante's office."
He placed it on Luca's desk.
Inside were photographs of me.
My apartment.
The coffee shop I visited before work.
My mother's old house.
Pictures dating back six months.
Before I'd ever sat at the DeSantis dinner table.
Before Luca had ever touched my hand.
Before Marco had left bruises around my throat.
Someone had been watching me from the beginning.
A note was clipped to the first page.
MARLOWE GIRL CONFIRMED.
Luca read it.
His face changed.
Marco flipped through the file.
"Dante knew who she was."
Isabella whispered, "Then Matteo knew."
Luca looked at me.
I didn't have to ask what that meant.
I'd thought the attack had happened because I'd overheard the wrong conversation.
It hadn't.
The conversation had only accelerated something already in motion.
I had been a target before I knew there was a war.
At noon, Luca moved me into a secured bedroom near his private suite.
He assigned six guards.
Marco protested.
Luca ignored him.
"You stay here," Luca told me.
I folded my arms.
"No."
"Elena."
"I'm not furniture."
"Someone has been following you for six months."
"Then hiding me in a bedroom isn't going to answer why."
"It might keep you alive."
"Until when?"
His jaw tightened.
"Until I end this."
"There it is again."
"What?"
"You deciding."
He stared at me.
I stepped closer.
"Marco decided I couldn't know the truth. Your mother decided I couldn't know my father's connection. Now you're deciding I shouldn't leave a room."
His expression softened slightly.
"Those aren't the same thing."
"No. But they all come from the same place."
"What place?"
"Men telling themselves control is protection."
That hit him.
I saw it.
Luca looked toward the door.
Then back at me.
"You're right."
I hadn't expected that.
He continued.
"But I'm still asking you to stay here tonight."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because you asked."
He nodded.
"Will you?"
I looked at the guards.
"Tonight."
"Thank you."
Two hours later, Luca left to question Matteo.
I tried sleeping.
It was impossible.
At 4:40 p.m., someone knocked.
"Miss Marlowe?"
Dante's voice.
My heart stopped.
I backed away from the door.
Then I heard one of the guards.
"Sir, you're not authorized—"
A thud.
Another.
I reached for my phone.
No signal.
The door handle moved.
I ran toward the bathroom.
Before I reached it, the door opened.
Dante stepped inside.
He looked exhausted.
A gun hung at his side.
"Don't scream."
I backed away.
"Luca knows."
"I know."
"He'll kill you."
"Probably."
"Then why are you here?"
Dante stared at me.
"Because Matteo knows what's in the ledger."
"So?"
"So Luca has about ten minutes before three men walk into the room where he's questioning Matteo."
Fear went through me.
I reached for the alarm button.
Dante caught my wrist.
"Don't."
I screamed.
He clamped a hand over my mouth.
Not my throat.
"Listen to me."
I kicked him.
Hard.
He cursed.
Two more men entered behind him.
Not Luca's guards.
One grabbed my arms.
I fought.
Dante looked toward the hallway.
"We're out of time."
They dragged me through the service corridor.
I heard shouting somewhere downstairs.
An alarm started.
Dante shoved open a rear exit.
A black SUV waited.
I fought so hard one of the men lost his grip.
I almost reached the door.
Dante caught me.
"I'm sorry."
"Then let me go!"
"I can't."
"Why?"
His face twisted.
"Because Matteo doesn't want the ledger anymore."
He pushed me into the vehicle.
"He wants you."
The door slammed.
The last thing I saw before the SUV moved was Luca running out of the mansion.
He was too far away.
But I saw his face.
May you like
And for the first time since meeting Luca DeSantis, I saw something stronger than anger in his eyes.
Fear.
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