Chapter 8 - The Truth About Five Years Ago
The morning sun had risen completely, flooding Luca’s private penthouse study with golden, warm light.
The dark, terrifying cellar felt like a distant nightmare, though the throbbing pain in my split lip kept the horror grounded in reality.
A family doctor had already treated Mia and me, patching my bruises and ensuring my daughter had suffered no physical harm.
Mia was now sitting on the plush velvet rug near the bay window, eating fresh strawberries from a silver bowl.
Beside her sat a brand-new needle and white thread that Luca had ordered brought to the room.
Luca sat behind his massive mahogany desk, having changed into a clean, unblemished charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He poured two cups of black coffee from a porcelain pot, pushing one across the desk toward me.
I didn't touch the cup.
I stood by the armrest of the leather chair, my posture tense, feeling the sudden distance between a maid and her master returning to the room.
“Sit down, Anna,” Luca said quietly.
“This is not an order as your employer. It is a request from a man who owes you his life.”
I slowly lowered myself into the deep leather armchair, my fingers knotting together in my lap.
“You knew Julian was dirty,” I said, breaking the silence.
“I suspected an inside leak for six months,” Luca answered, leaning back and resting his chin on his steepled fingers.
“Shipments were intercepted with precision that only someone with our master encryption keys could coordinate. But Julian had woven himself so deeply into every layer of our administration that striking without absolute proof would have triggered a civil war among our five captains.”
His stormy eyes met mine across the desk, piercing and intensely focused.
“Your daughter handed me the single piece of physical evidence that saved dozens of loyal men and cleared the shadow over my father’s murder.”
“She didn't know what it was,” I whispered.
“She just wanted to return a pretty piece of paper with a hawk.”
Luca’s gaze drifted toward the window, watching Mia place a fresh strawberry against the stuffed bear’s nose as if feeding it.
“She has your eyes, Anna,” Luca said suddenly, his tone shifting into something dangerously intimate.
My breath hitched in my chest.
I lowered my head, staring down at my calloused hands.
“Don Luca, please—”
“Do you think I forgot that night in Chicago five years ago?” he interrupted softly.
The room seemed to spin slightly beneath my feet.
Five years ago.
Before I ever took a cleaning rag in this New York mansion.
Before I wore the gray uniform of a nameless maid.
I had worked as an event coordinator at an elite hotel in downtown Chicago where the Valente family held an annual private charity gala.
That night, rival hitmen had set fire to the lower ballroom in an attempt to assassinate the young heir to the Valente throne.
In the chaos and thick smoke, I had pulled a wounded, disoriented man through the kitchen service shafts and hid him inside the dry pantry until dawn.
We had spent hours in that pitch-black, suffocating space, clinging to each other while gunfire rattled outside.
Neither of us knew if we would live to see the morning.
In that desperate, terrifying dark, fear had dissolved into raw, human passion.
By the time the Valente extraction teams stormed the hotel at sunrise, I had slipped away into the crowd, terrified of the violent world he inhabited.
Eight months later, Mia was born.
“You disappeared without a trace,” Luca continued, his voice heavy with an emotion he had buried for half a decade.
“I tore Chicago apart looking for the woman with hazel eyes who kept me breathing in that pantry. Then, four years ago, you applied for a maid position here under your maiden name.”
I looked up, tears finally spilling over my bruised cheeks.
“I didn't come here to trap you, Luca,” I whispered desperately.
“My family cut me off when I got pregnant. I had no money, no home, and I knew that the only place on earth where nobody would dare look for me—where no street thugs could harm my baby—was behind the highest walls in the city.”
Luca rose from his desk and walked around to stand beside my chair.
“I knew who you were the day you carried Mia into the garden three years ago,” Luca said, looking down at me.
My jaw dropped in sheer astonishment.
“You... you knew all this time?”
“A Don knows every breath drawn under his roof,” Luca replied softly.
“I saw how you hid her. I saw how terrified you were that I would take her from you. So I stayed back. I let you raise her in peace, watching over both of you from the shadows.”
May you like
He knelt down on one knee right beside my chair, bringing his gaze level with mine.
“Until Julian brought the war to your bedroom door.”
