Chapter 4 - Whispers in the Snow
The house had fallen into a heavy, suffocating slumber by two in the morning.
I had been assigned a suite in the east wing—a cavernous room draped in heavy damask with a four-poster bed large enough for four people. But sleep was an impossibility. The wind shrieked through the eaves of the estate, throwing hard pellets of sleet against the diamond-paned windows like handfuls of gravel.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Luca’s hand resting on the nape of my neck. I felt the rough texture of his thumb against my jaw, the dark, predatory promise in his voice when he told me he wouldn't let me go back.
*It was an act,* I told myself, pacing the Persian rug in bare feet, wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe provided by the estate. *It was an operational strategy. Leverage. He used the tools at hand.*
But my pulse refused to listen to corporate logic.
Thirsty, my throat parched from the heavy wine and the dry radiator heat, I cracked the heavy oak door of my room and slipped out into the gallery. The long corridor was lit only by dim wall sconces set twenty feet apart, casting long, distorted shadows across the portraits of dead Moretti patriarchs.
As I neared the mezzanine that overlooked the grand salon, a sound caught my ear.
Not the wind.
Voices. Low, harsh, and muffled by heavy mahogany.
I froze. My executive training—the part of me that had spent three years listening through closed doors to gauge whether a CEO was about to sign a merger or fire his CFO—took over before my survival instinct could intervene.
I pressed my back against the wall, slipping behind a towering marble bust of an ancient Roman emperor, and leaned toward the sliver of light bleeding from the bottom of Salvatore’s private study doors.
“...he won't sign the transfer,” Salvatore’s voice growled, stripped of all the faux-civility he had displayed at dinner. “The girl has his ear, and she’s looking at the Elizabeth manifests. If she runs the serial numbers on those containers through customs, the entire shipment of Kalashnikovs from Odessa gets flagged.”
My blood turned to liquid nitrogen. *Odessa. Kalashnikovs.* This wasn't corporate debt. This was federal treason.
Another voice answered—Julian. “Then we cut the girl out. She’s an assistant, Uncle. She takes the subway home. She lives in an apartment building in Astoria with a broken buzzer. She’s nothing.”
“She’s wearing the emeralds,” Salvatore spat. “If Luca took those out of the vault, he’s already bound her to him under the old rite. If she disappears, Luca burns the five boroughs searching for the ash. We don't touch her until the port delivery is cleared on Tuesday. Once the crates are on the trucks, Luca has no leverage left. If he resists the Bellini merger then... we retire him.”
*Retire him.*
A euphemism that carried the weight of a bullet to the base of the skull.
My breath caught in my throat. I stepped back, my bare foot slipping slightly on the polished floor. A tiny, imperceptible squeak of wood echoed in the quiet hall.
Inside the study, the voices instantly stopped.
Panic surged through my veins like adrenaline from a syringe. I didn't run toward my room—the hallway was too long, the footsteps approaching the study door too rapid.
Suddenly, a hand reached out from the darkened alcove of the linen corridor, grabbed my wrist with absolute, crushing strength, and yanked me into the shadows.
A scream rose in my throat, but a broad, calloused palm clamped over my mouth before sound could escape. I was dragged backward into a dark, narrow service stairwell. My back hit a chest as hard as reinforced concrete. The scent of cedarwood, rain, and tobacco flooded my senses.
*Luca.*
“Quiet,” he breathed against my ear, the vibration of his voice humming directly through my skull.
Through the heavy oak door of the service stairs, I heard Salvatore’s study door swing open. Heavy, deliberate footsteps walked out onto the gallery floor. A pause. The silence stretched so thin I could hear the sleet hitting the roof three stories above.
Luca’s arm was wrapped around my torso like an iron band, lifting me slightly off my feet so my bare heels wouldn't touch the cold steps. His palm stayed pressed over my lips, his thumb resting gently against the side of my throat where my pulse was detonating like an artillery barrage.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Salvatore muttered a curse in Sicilian. A door clicked shut. The footsteps retreated.
Luca didn't release me immediately. He stood there in the total, velvet blackness of the stairwell, holding me against his body until the violent shaking in my limbs began to subside.
Slowly, his hand slid away from my mouth, his fingers trailing down my neck to rest over the rapid fluttering of my carotid artery.
“You have a dangerous habit of wandering into places you don't belong, Emma,” he whispered in the dark, his voice low, gravelly, and far too close.
“They’re going to kill you,” I whispered back, my voice shaking so hard the words barely held together. I turned in his arms until I was facing him, even though I could only see the dark, sharp outline of his face in the gloom. “Salvatore... the docks in Elizabeth. It’s weapons, Luca. Military grade. From Odessa. He’s moving them on Tuesday. If you don't agree to marry Gianna, he’s going to—”
“I know.”
The calm certainty in his voice silenced me instantly.
“You know?” I breathed.
“I’ve known for three weeks,” Luca said quietly. In the faint sliver of moonlight filtering through a high transom window, I saw his eyes. They were cold, lethal, and utterly calculated. “Why do you think I brought you here, Emma?”
The words hit me like a physical blow. The warmth that had been building between us over the last twelve hours vanished, replaced by an icy pit in my stomach.
“I was the distraction,” I said, the realization tasting like ashes on my tongue. “You needed Salvatore focused on me. You needed him worried about his corporate holdings so he wouldn't realize you were tracking his contraband.”
Luca reached out, his hand cupping the side of my face, but I pulled back, pressing myself against the wooden banister.
“Emma,” he said, his voice dropping into a rare, desperate cadence. “Listen to me.”
“Did you use me?” My voice broke, small and betrayed. “Tell me the truth, Luca. Am I just an audit report in an emerald dress to you?”
Luca stepped down one step, eliminating the space between us until his towering frame blocked out the faint moonlight entirely. He didn't touch me, but his presence was an absolute wall.
“I have spent three years watching you protect my life, my name, and my sanity from across an office,” he said, every word heavy with an intensity that made the wooden stairs beneath us feel unstable. “I have watched men look at you like you were invisible, while you tore their strategies apart with a stroke of a pen. When Salvatore moved against me, I had fifty women I could have hired to play this part. Socialites. Actresses. Women who know how to lie for a living.”
He reached out again, and this time, his grip on my jaw was unyielding. He lifted my face until our eyes met in the dark.
May you like
“I chose you because you are the only person on this earth whose loyalty I don't have to buy. And because... if I had to sit at that table and pretend to love a woman to save my empire, I wanted it to be the only woman I’ve ever actually wanted to give it to.”
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