Chapter 4 - Blood and Old Scars
Inside the cramped, warm booth of the 24-hour diner, the neon light cast a sickly green glow across the worn laminate table.
Luca had carried Teresa inside in his arms, ignoring the startled cook behind the counter and the two truck drivers sitting at the stools.
One look at Luca’s face and the dangerous line of his coat had silenced every question in the room.
Daniel stood outside the glass door, facing the street, his back turned to grant his employer total privacy while his hand remained resting casually near his left lapel.
Teresa was wrapped in Luca’s dry wool trench coat, the heavy fabric drowning her small frame.
A thick ceramic mug of steaming black coffee sat between her trembling hands, the steam rising to warm her pale, hollow cheeks.
Luca sat on the opposite vinyl bench, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.
From his inner pocket, he retrieved her tortoiseshell reading glasses and gently slid the arms over her ears.
Teresa blinked through the clean lenses.
For the first time all night, she could clearly see the face of the boy she had raised.
Tears spilled over her weathered eyelids, cutting tracks through the soot and rain on her cheeks.
“You shouldn't be here, Luca,” she whispered, her voice shaking violently against the rim of the heavy mug.
“You should be at your home. Your bride... your guests...”
Luca reached across the table and took both of her cold, swollen hands in his own.
“Do not speak of that woman, Teresa.”
“She told me the truth, Luca.”
Teresa’s chin trembled as she tried to pull her hands away, feeling ashamed of her broken fingernails and the dirt under her skin.
“I looked at that room tonight. I saw those politicians with their gold watches and those women in their silk dresses.”
She looked down at the scratched Formica table.
“I don't belong in a palace like that, Luca. I never did. Your father was a warrior, and you are a king in this city. I’m just an old woman who used to scrub floors in the basement of the Palmer House.”
Luca’s voice dropped to a level so intense, so furious, that the ceramic mug on the table vibrated faintly.
“My father died in the dirt behind an auto shop, Teresa.”
Teresa looked up, startled.
“And you spent twenty years scrubbing floors so that I could have clean shirts, so that I could go to private school, so that the men who killed him couldn't find me.”
He tightened his grip on her fragile fingers, refusing to let her pull away.
“There is not a single person sitting in that dining room tonight—not Senator Bellini, not his wife, and certainly not their daughter—who is worthy of breathing the same air as you.”
Teresa let out a ragged, broken sob.
“She said you looked at my dress yesterday and cringed, Luca.”
“She lied to you.”
“She said you only invited me out of pity, because you didn't want the old neighborhood talking about how you abandoned your family.”
“She lied to you, Teresa, to poison you against me and to poison me against you.”
Luca reached into his pocket and placed the small navy blue handbag on the bench beside her.
Teresa gasped softly, her fingers reaching out to touch the worn leather like an old friend.
“Julia saved this for you,” Luca said softly.
Teresa looked up, her eyes wide with sudden fear.
“The young server girl? The one with the kind eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God, Luca, is she alright? That girl tried to stop Vanessa from pushing me out the door. Vanessa struck her with that heavy brass sign! I heard the bone crack!”
Luca’s eyes darkened into a bottomless, pitiless void.
“Julia is safe. She is being cared for by our doctors, and she will never have to worry about rent or her mother’s medical bills for the rest of her life.”
Teresa bowed her head, clutching the leather purse against her chest.
“Vanessa told me something else, Luca.”
Luca waited, his chest rising and falling in slow, measured beats.
“She told me that the Bellini family owns the judge who oversees the probate estate of the Moretti properties.”
Luca leaned closer.
“What did she say about the probate, Teresa?”
“She laughed at me when I was picking up the biscotti from the floor. She leaned down and whispered that the wedding wasn't just a marriage, it was a surrender.”
Teresa looked up, her cloudy eyes sharp with ancient maternal instinct.
“She said that by next month, her father’s investment trust would hold sixty percent of the voting shares in the Moretti commercial holdings, and that once the signatures were dried on the marriage certificate, they would have the legal authority to place you in an administrative conservatorship if you ever stepped out of line.”
Luca’s expression did not change, but a terrifying, predatory stillness settled over his entire posture.
The pieces of a puzzle he had been analyzing for six months suddenly clicked into a single, cohesive picture of betrayal.
The Bellini family hadn't simply sought an alliance with the city’s most powerful syndicate.
They were orchestrating a hostile corporate and legal takeover, using Vanessa’s marriage to infiltrate the inner sanctum of the Moretti empire, neutralize his street-level autonomy, and strip him of his generational wealth.
And Teresa—the only person alive who held original deed-holder rights to the founding Moretti charters from 1984—was the single legal obstacle standing between the Bellinis and absolute control.
If Teresa was dead, or if she was officially declared an incompetent transient in Milwaukee without identification or family representation, her charter shares would default to the primary corporate heir.
To Luca.
And upon marriage, those shares would immediately fall under the joint management of the Bellini financial trust.
Vanessa hadn't thrown Teresa out because of classist vanity alone.
She had thrown her out to eliminate a legal roadblock before the contracts were signed on Saturday morning.
A slow, cold smile touched Luca Moretti’s lips.
It was not a smile of amusement.
It was the smile of an executioner who had just read the condemned man’s confession.
“Teresa,” Luca said softly, his voice carrying the gentleness of a devoted son.
“Do you trust me?”
“With my life, Luca. You know I always have.”
“Then you are not going back to Ravenswood tonight.”
Teresa looked confused.
“Where am I going?”
Luca stood up from the booth and took out his phone.
“You are going to the penthouse at the Carlyle on Lake Shore Drive. The one registered under my mother’s maiden name.”
He looked toward Daniel, who immediately opened the diner door.
“Daniel.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Call Dr. Harris. Have him bring a full nursing kit to the Carlyle penthouse. I want a complete nutritional panel, warm IV fluids, and twenty-four-hour monitoring for my aunt.”
“Understood, Mr. Moretti.”
“And Daniel?”
“Sir?”
“Bring Julia Bennett to the Carlyle as well. She is to be my aunt’s personal companion and the household supervisor of that residence, effective immediately. Her salary is doubled, and her mother is to be moved to the private suite at Northwestern Memorial before dawn.”
A faint light of relief washed over Teresa’s tired, weathered face.
Luca leaned down, kissed his aunt’s forehead, and pulled the wool trench coat securely around her shoulders.
“Get some sleep, Teresa.”
“What are you going to do, Luca?” she asked, her voice trembling with sudden dread as she saw the darkness gathering in his eyes.
Luca straightened his cuffs, the diamond cufflinks glittering under the cheap diner lights like cold shards of ice.
May you like
“I am going home to my fiancée,” he said softly.
“She has a wedding to plan.”
