Chapter 5 - Ghosts from the Past
I stared at the manila folder on the tray, my fingers trembling as I clutched my sleeping daughter closer to my chest. The hospital room felt smaller, the walls closing in as the reality of Luka Moretti’s words began to sink into my bones. “How do you know my father?” I whispered, the question slipping out before I could stop it. My father had passed away five years ago in a fiery, suspicious car crash—an accident that the local police quickly closed, though my father’s shipping firm had mysteriously gone bankrupt overnight, and his life’s work was swallowed up by a larger, predatory corporate entity run by none other than Julian’s mentor, senior partner Arthur Vance. Luka’s hard expression softened momentarily, a flicker of dark, complicated emotion passing through his eyes. He pulled a worn, folded photograph from his breast pocket and laid it gently on the edge of the blanket. I looked down, and a sharp gasp escaped my lips. It was a photograph of my father, standing alongside a much younger Luka Moretti outside an old shipyard on the docks of Boston, both of them smiling, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders like brothers. “Your father, David Evans, saved my life fifteen years ago when I was nothing more than a reckless kid trying to survive the docks,” Luka said, his voice dropping an octave, rich with a history I had never known existed. “He taught me honor. He taught me loyalty. And when he was systematically destroyed by the men you eventually married into, I swore an oath that I would spend every waking hour ensuring his bloodline was protected.” I stared at the photo, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes and tracking hot paths down my cheeks. For five years, I had believed I was completely alone in the world—an orphan with no family, married off to a man who only saw me as a quiet trophy wife to decorate his arm at country club galas. I never knew my father had left behind a guardian angel wrapped in tattoos and forged in steel. “Julian... Julian and his firm took everything from us,” I choked out, the bitter memories flooding back. “They forced my father out of his company, and when he died, they made sure I had nothing left to my name except a mountain of fabricated debts. That’s how Julian trapped me into marrying him in the first place... he offered to pay off my father’s medical debts, only to treat me like a prisoner.” Luka’s jaw clenched so hard I thought I heard bone grind against bone. A terrifying, ice-cold fury flashed in his eyes. “And today, he threw you away like trash to run off with his mistress,” Luka murmured, his voice deadly quiet. “He thought he could discard you without consequence. But he has no idea what happens when you wake a sleeping predator.”
