Chapter 2 - The Mother’s TerrorThe private study on the second floor was lit only by the soft glow of a desk lamp. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls, filled with leather-bound ledgers and old family albums. Lorenzo sat in his high-backed leather chair, the sleeping child still curled across his chest like a small, warm anchor. She had refused to let go of his lapel, whimpering every time he attempted to shift her weight.
The door clicked open.
Sal Bruno ushered in a young woman with hair pulled back in a frantic, loose braid and a faded cotton apron over a simple blue dress. Elena Vance trembled from head to toe, her knuckles white as she wrung her hands together. Her eyes darted from Sal to the armed guards near the door, and finally, to Lorenzo.
When she saw her daughter asleep against the most feared mafia boss on the Eastern Seaboard, Elena gasped, dropping to her knees.
"Please, Mr. Moretti! I am so, so sorry!" she wept, tears spilling over her lashes. "She woke up crying from a nightmare—she always looks for me—and I stepped away to empty the linen bins in the east wing for just one minute! I didn't mean to let her wander! Please don't hurt her!"
Lorenzo studied the woman. She didn't look like a spy or an assassin. She looked exhausted, terrified, and fiercely protective.
"Stand up, Mrs. Vance," Lorenzo commanded, his voice dropping into a register that brook no argument.
Elena scrambled to her feet, her gaze fixed on the floor.
"Where did she learn that name?" Lorenzo asked.
Elena blinked, confused. "Wh-what name, sir?"
"Renzo," Lorenzo said, the syllables tasting foreign and heavy on his tongue. "Nobody outside my immediate family uses that name. My brother Matteo used it. My mother used it. My uncle Vittorio remembers it. So how does a three-year-old child of a kitchen maid know to call me by a dead man's private name?"
Elena’s face drained of color. She looked up, her lips parting in a silent, panicked denial. "She... she hears things in the halls, Mr. Moretti. The other maids—"
"Don't lie to me," Lorenzo interrupted, standing up carefully so as not to wake the child. He walked around the mahogany desk, stopping three feet from Elena. The sheer physical presence of him made her step backward until her spine hit the heavy oak door. "People who lie to me don't survive the night in this house. Who are you, Elena? And who is her father?"
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Elena’s breathing turned shallow. She looked down at her sleeping daughter, then up at Lorenzo, a desperate resolve replacing her terror.
"Her father is dead," Elena whispered, her voice cracking. "And I came here because I had nowhere else left to hide from the man who killed him."
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