Chapter 12 - The Shattered Bride
The heavy rain had completely washed away the grime on the third-floor windows of the manor’s east turret.
Inside the luxurious guest suite, the fire in the marble hearth had burned down to cold, gray ashes.
Vanessa Bellini sat huddled on the edge of the velvet chaise lounge, wrapped in a mink coat that she had pulled over her ruined red silk dress.
Her elaborate updo had completely collapsed, dark strands of hair hanging across her hollow, tear-stained face.
Her mascara had run down her cheeks in dark, greasy streaks, making her look like a carnival doll that had been discarded in an alley.
Every ten seconds, her frantic eyes darted toward the heavy oak door.
Outside in the corridor, two armed guards stood motionless, their heavy boots shifting occasionally against the floorboards.
She had spent the entire night listening to the distant rumbles of thunder, praying for the sound of Julian’s victory.
She had envisioned Luca lying dead on his bedroom floor.
She had imagined herself ascending the grand staircase as the undisputed queen of the combined Moretti-Bellini empire.
She had imagined ordering Sophie Hayes thrown into an unmarked ditch in the southern marshes.
Yet as the pale, gray dawn light began to bleed through the lace curtains, no one had come to crown her.
The estate had remained disturbingly quiet.
Suddenly, the brass lock of the heavy door clicked with a sharp, concussive snap.
Vanessa gasped, springing to her feet, clutching the fur coat tightly around her trembling chest.
The door swung open slowly.
Luca Moretti stepped into the room.
He had showered and changed into an immaculate three-piece midnight-blue suit, his white linen shirt pressed to perfection.
His dark hair was slicked back, his jaw cleanly shaved, showing not a single mark of the bloody war he had fought hours earlier.
He looked magnificent, regal, and terrifyingly untouchable.
Behind him, the corridor was empty.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, turning the deadbolt with a soft, final click.
Vanessa’s heart leaped into her throat, a sickening mixture of hope and terror warring inside her chest.
“Luca!” she cried, taking two stumbling steps across the rug toward him.
“Luca, thank God you are alive!”
“Those monsters... they kept me locked in this room all night!”
“They wouldn't let me call anyone! They wouldn't let me check on you!”
She reached out with her manicured hands, attempting to throw her arms around his neck.
Luca did not move back.
He simply raised his left arm, his forearm catching her wrists in mid-air with the cold, immovable strength of an iron bar.
He held her arms suspended between them, his dark eyes staring down into hers with clinical detachment.
“Do not touch me, Vanessa,” he said softly.
Vanessa froze, her breath catching in her throat.
“Luca... what is wrong with you?” she stammered, trying to force a trembling, seductive smile.
“It’s me! It’s your fiancée!”
“We survived! The crisis is over!”
Luca let go of her wrists, letting her hands drop heavily to her sides.
He reached into his tailored vest pocket and pulled out a small black velvet box.
He tossed the box onto the low glass coffee table between them.
It landed with a dull, hollow thud.
“Your father has already departed for Calabria, Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice flat and measured.
Vanessa’s eyes widened in horror.
“Calabria?” she gasped.
“Why would my father go to Italy right now?”
“Because if he had remained in Chicago for another thirty minutes, I would have fed his heart to the lake trout,” Luca replied smoothly.
“He signed over every asset, every ship, and every warehouse owned by the Bellini family.”
“Your syndicate is dissolved.”
“Your family name is dead.”
Vanessa staggered backward until the back of her legs struck the chaise lounge, and she collapsed heavily onto the cushions.
“No...” she whispered, shaking her head in frantic denial.
“No, that’s impossible! Julian was supposed to take the vault!”
“Julian was supposed to bring the second key to the carriage house!”
The moment those words slipped past her lips, Vanessa slapped both hands over her mouth, realizing her fatal mistake.
Luca stood motionless, a faint, humorless smirk touching the corners of his mouth.
“Thank you for confirming your treason under your own breath, Vanessa,” Luca murmured.
“Though I hardly needed your confession.”
“Julian Vance is currently lying in pieces on a metal slab in Indiana.”
“I threw him through a fourth-story window myself.”
Vanessa’s hands dropped from her face, her jaw hanging slack in pure, unadulterated disbelief.
“Julian... is dead?” she breathed, her voice cracking.
“He was never Carmine’s son,” Luca continued, stepping closer until his shadow completely enveloped her.
“He was Salvatore’s bastard.”
“A tool forged by your father and Peter Moretti to dismantle my father’s sovereignty twelve years ago.”
“You knew Robert Keller held the second key to the Federal Reserve vault.”
“You tried to starve him, beat him, and when he refused to betray me, you fractured his skull against a kitchen table.”
Vanessa’s composure completely dissolved into hysterical, sniveling panic.
She fell to her knees upon the Persian rug, crawling forward until her hands touched the polished leather of Luca’s shoes.
“Luca, please!” she sobbed, burying her face against his trousers, her tears soaking through the fine wool.
“I had no choice! Julian had Leonardo in Milan!”
“He sent me photographs of my little brother tied to a chair with wires around his neck!”
“He told me that if I didn't get him that second key, they would slaughter Leo and send him to me in pieces!”
“I did it to save my brother, Luca! You understand family! You understand loyalty!”
Luca looked down at the weeping woman beneath his feet, his face an expression of utter disgust.
“If you had come to me that afternoon, Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice ringing with absolute clarity, “Leonardo would have been rescued by sundown.”
“I would have mobilized twelve private security contractors in Milan before Julian could have even blinked.”
“You didn't keep silent to protect your brother.”
“You kept silent because Julian promised you fifty percent of the European shipping monopoly.”
“You kept silent because you wanted to wear the crown without answering to me.”
He stepped back, pulling his foot out of her grasp.
Vanessa looked up, her face twisted with a mixture of rage, humiliation, and desperate sorrow.
“You would choose them over me?” she screamed, pointing an accusing, trembling finger toward the floor.
“You would choose an obsolete, decrepit cook and a filthy, penniless housemaid over the Bellini bloodline?”
“Look at her, Luca!”
“She is a nobody! A kitchen girl who scrubs grease from your floors and begs for overtime hours!”
“I was born to rule this city beside you!”
Luca leaned down, his eyes narrowing into two icy blades that seemed to pierce right through her skull.
“Sophie Hayes bled through her skin to protect an old man who had no power to reward her,” Luca whispered with terrifying intensity.
“She stood before twenty-eight of my most powerful peers, bearing your public humiliation without breaking her oath.”
“She held fifty million dollars in her apron pocket and hid it in a laundry cart to keep my father’s legacy safe.”
“While you,” Luca continued, his voice dripping with venom, “wore red silk and diamond earrings while plotting to slit my throat in my own bed.”
“Sophie Hayes possesses more nobility in a single drop of her blood than your entire treacherous bloodline has possessed in three generations.”
He reached down, picked up the black velvet box from the glass table, and popped the brass latch open.
Inside lay the eight-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring he had placed upon her finger six months prior.
“Take off the matching bracelet, Vanessa,” Luca commanded coldly.
With trembling, humiliated hands, Vanessa unclasped the diamond tennis bracelet from her left wrist and dropped it onto the rug.
Luca did not even look at the jewels.
He turned toward the door and knocked twice.
The lock clicked, and Daniel Rossi stepped into the room, flanked by two armed guards wearing civilian trench coats.
“Daniel,” Luca said, not turning back to look at his former bride.
“Boss,” Daniel replied.
“Escort Miss Bellini to the private gate at the rear of the property.”
“She will leave on foot, wearing only the clothes on her back.”
“Every bank account associated with her name has been frozen under syndicate emergency covenants.”
“Her passport has been flagged with federal border authorities under suspected maritime contraband financing.”
“If she is seen within fifty miles of Chicago after noon today, treat her as a hostile combatant.”
Vanessa’s eyes went wide with absolute horror.
“On foot?!” she shrieked, scrambling backward across the floor.
“Luca, you cannot do this! I am a Bellini! You cannot cast me into the street like a common beggar!”
Luca did not answer her.
He walked through the open doorway into the sunlit corridor, never looking back.
Behind him, the frantic, hysterical screams of Vanessa Bellini echoed off the high plaster ceilings as the two guards dragged her toward the service stairs.
The poison had been purged from the house.
May you like
The false bride was gone.
And down in the grand foyer, Sophie Hayes was waiting.
