Chapter 3 - The Maid at the Threshold
The voice was choked with a panic so absolute it didn't sound human.
Footsteps pounded across the hardwood floor of the corridor—fast, uneven, frantic steps that ignored the presence of the armed guards stationed outside.
A second later, Elena burst through the open doorway of my study.
Her hair, usually tied back in a neat, sensible bun at the nape of her neck, had come completely undone. Long, dark strands hung wild and damp around her pale, sweat-streaked face. Her maid’s apron was crooked, the white linen stained with a smudge of dust near the hem.
She stopped dead in her tracks five feet inside the room.
Her chest was heaving, her hands clutching frantically at the fabric of her skirt as her eyes swept the scene.
She saw Lorenzo kneeling on the rug, blood dripping from his chin. She saw Dominic standing to the side, his gun lowered but his body tense.
And then her eyes landed on me.
I was still on my knees on the floor, surrounded by broken shards of glass and spilled scotch, holding her eight-month-old son tightly against my chest.
The relief that should have flooded a mother’s face upon finding her straying child didn't come.
Instead, every drop of color drained from Elena’s skin.
Her face went from pale to a ghastly, translucent white—the color of candle wax. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Her eyes darted from my face down to the baby’s exposed neck, where his soft curls were pulled back, revealing the tiny crescent-shaped birthmark in the light of the desk lamp.
She saw that I was looking at it.
She saw that I knew.
She wasn't relieved that her baby was safe.
She was terrified.
It was a visceral, suffocating terror—the look of a woman who had spent months walking on a thin sheet of ice over a freezing ocean, only to hear the ice crack beneath her heels.
Slowly, deliberately, I stood up.
My knees popped in the quiet room, but my body felt weightless, driven by a cold, terrifying surge of adrenaline. I held Leo securely against my shoulder, my large left hand cupping the back of his head, shielding him against my chest.
I took one step toward her.
Elena instantly took a step backward, her heels skidding against the polished oak threshold of the doorway. Her hand flew to her throat, her knuckles white as she squeezed her collar.
“Elena,” I said.
My voice wasn't angry. It was terrifyingly calm—a low, resonant tone that commanded instant, absolute obedience throughout my entire domain.
She shrank back another inch, her eyes wide, wild, and brimming with sudden, thick tears.
“Who is Leo’s father?” I asked.
The question hung in the air like a heavy, suffocating smog.
Beside the desk, Lorenzo tilted his head slightly, his bruised face registering confusion. Dominic’s eyes narrowed as he looked between me, the baby, and the trembling woman standing at the door. He didn't know about the birthmark yet, but he knew me well enough to recognize that the universe had just shifted beneath our feet.
Elena’s lips trembled violently. She shook her head—a quick, frantic motion of denial.
“Please...” she whispered. Her voice was a broken, pitiful rasp. “Please, Mr. Moretti...”
“Answer the question, Elena,” I stepped closer. The distance between us closed to less than six feet. “Look at me. Look at his face. Look at his neck. Who is this child?”
Tears spilled over her lower eyelids, tracing two clear, wet tracks down through the dust on her cheeks. She looked at Leo, who was currently reaching out toward her with his little hand, babbling happily, entirely unaware of the storm raging over his head.
Then she looked back up at my eyes—at the storm-grey irises that matched her son’s perfectly.
“Don’t ask me that,” she choked out, her voice breaking into a quiet, desperate sob. “Please, sir... if you have any humanity left in you... don't ask me that question. Just let me take him. Let me take him and leave. You will never see us again. I promise you on my life, you will never see us again!”
“Leave?” I repeated the word softly, tasting the absurdity of it.
I looked down at the child in my arms—the boy who bore the face of my buried son, the boy who carried my blood, the boy who had been living under my roof for eight months while I bled out my soul in isolation.
“You brought my son’s ghost into my house,” I said, my voice dropping an octave into something dark, resonant, and dangerous. “You let him crawl across my floor while I was executing a traitor. And now you expect me to let you walk out that door with him?”
“He isn't your son!” Elena cried out, her fear momentarily giving way to a frantic, motherly desperation.
“Then whose son is he?!” I roared.
The loudness of my voice finally startled the baby. Leo let out a small, sharp whimper, burying his small face into the lapel of my jacket.
Instantly, my heart squeezed. I smoothed my hand over his dark curls, my tone dropping back into a quiet, soothing murmur. “Shh. Shh, little one. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I looked back up at Elena. Her chest was heaving, her body shaking so violently I thought she was going to collapse onto the hardwood floor.
“Dominic,” I said without turning my head.
“Boss?”
“Take Lorenzo down to the sub-basement,” I ordered smoothly. “Lock him in the holding cell. He stays alive until I say otherwise. I have new questions for him now.”
Lorenzo’s eyes widened. “Dante, wait! I don't know anything about the kid! I swear to God—”
“Move him,” I commanded.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, grabbed Lorenzo by the collar of his ruined suit jacket, and dragged the screaming traitor out through the side entrance of the study, locking the heavy iron door behind them.
The study fell completely silent, save for the hum of the desk lamp, the quiet whimpering of the baby against my chest, and the ragged, terrified breathing of the woman standing before me.
I walked over to my desk, picked up the silver desk bell, and rang it once.
Within three seconds, Marco and Gianna—two of my most trusted house guards—appeared at the main doorway behind Elena.
“Lock the estate,” I ordered them, my eyes never leaving Elena’s face. “Nobody enters. Nobody leaves. Cut the landlines, jam the cellular signals within a two-mile radius, and bring the house doctor to the medical wing upstairs.”
Marco bowed his head instantly. “Yes, Don Moretti.”
Elena watched in absolute horror as the guards stepped back and closed the heavy oak doors, locking us inside the study.
May you like
I looked at her—this quiet, fragile woman who held the key to the greatest lie ever told to me.
“Now, Elena,” I said, sitting down in my leather chair with the baby held securely in my lap. “You are going to sit down across from me, and you are going to tell me why I buried a closed casket three years ago while my son’s blood is currently sitting in my lap.”
