Chapter 3
A House With Two Masters
Salvatore ordered the burner phone sealed away, but not before Luca copied the audio and memorized every word. No one outside the room was told what had been found. The baby shower ended in whispers. Ryan and Linda were not allowed to leave, but they were not dragged through the house either. Salvatore preferred live prey that believed it still had room to move.
Carlo Ventresca arrived upstairs ten minutes later, summoned with the same calm formality used for any trusted adviser. He was in his sixties, silver at the temples, elegant in the quiet way men with old power often were. He entered with concern already arranged on his face. “I heard there was an incident.”
Emily watched him from the settee. If Linda’s recording had not existed, she might have believed him.
Salvatore stood near the mantel, massive and unreadable. “My daughter will remain in the east wing tonight.”
“Of course,” Carlo said at once. “I’ll double the men on the corridor.”
“No.” Salvatore’s tone hardened by a shade. “Luca will handle the corridor.”
Carlo held the silence half a second too long before smiling. “Naturally.”
He asked after Emily’s health, after the baby, after whether Ryan had lost his senses entirely. His outrage sounded correct. His sympathy arrived on time. But Emily noticed one small thing: when he asked if anything had been taken from the nursery, his eyes went first not to Salvatore, but to her.
As if he thought she might already know what mattered.
After he left, Salvatore gave no opinion aloud. He only said, “No one tells Carlo where you sleep.”
That night the east wing became a fortress. Luca stationed men at both staircases. Mirella stayed in the adjoining room. Emily was given a new phone and told the old one would be checked by someone loyal. A tray of food was sent up and left outside the door. Emily could not eat more than a few bites. Every sound in the corridor made her skin tighten.
Just before midnight, a maid she did not recognize knocked with fresh chamomile tea.
Bianca, one of the few older household staff Salvatore had kept for years, intercepted the tray before it crossed the threshold. She smelled the tea, frowned, and carried it straight to Mirella.
The doctor tested a few drops against a reagent from her bag. The liquid turned cloudy at once.
Sedative.
Emily did not cry then. Something inside her had gone past tears. She sat very still with both hands on her belly and listened while Salvatore, in the next room, gave three clipped orders that sent half the house into motion.
He changed the plan immediately. Loud enough for several guards to hear, he announced that Emily would be moved before dawn to a safer location. Then he gave the real instruction only to Luca and Bianca: Emily would stay exactly where she was. The corridor lights were dimmed. The east wing went quiet.
At three in the morning, the trap sprang.
Luca caught the movement first—a shadow at the end of the hallway where no one unauthorized should have been. One of the night guards challenged the figure and went down with a muffled grunt. By the time the others reached the turn in the corridor, the intruder was gone, vanishing into the old servant stairwell as if he knew the house better than a guest ever could.
Salvatore was outside Emily’s room in seconds, gun drawn, Luca beside him.
The injured guard was still conscious, blood darkening his sleeve. “He had a key,” he rasped. “Came from inside the west stairs.”
Luca searched the stairwell. He returned with one thing in his hand.
A cufflink.
Not cheap. Not generic. Black enamel set in silver, stamped on its face with the old Moretti council crest—a piece worn only by men allowed at Salvatore’s private table.
Emily stared at it from the doorway, her skin gone cold.
May you like
Ryan and Linda were dangerous. She knew that now. But this was larger than a brutal husband and a poisonous mother.
Somewhere inside her father’s house, someone at his own table had tried to reach her room before dawn.
