Chapter 7 - The Final Confrontation
The transition didn't happen overnight, but the walls of isolation that had defined Alessandro Moretti’s life crumbled piece by piece over the following weeks.
The Maroni syndicate made one final, desperate move three weeks after Julian’s exile—a botched attempt to intercept a cargo shipment near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge that was crushed by Vince and his enforcers before it even reached the toll booths. The message sent back to Chicago was unequivocal: The Moretti house is closed to outsiders.
Julian Vance’s name was expunged from every ledger, contract, and historical archive in the estate. In his place, Alessandro appointed a new, vetted administrative team, but he kept me close—not as a housekeeper, but as a confidential manager of the estate’s domestic operations, a position that required little physical labor and plenty of organizational oversight.
More importantly, the garden cottage was torn down.
On a crisp November morning, Alessandro stood with me by the stone patio, watching a demolition crew dismantle the damp, rotting wooden walls where I had spent my first miserable weeks on the property.
“What are you going to put there?” I asked, leaning against the wrought-iron railing with a cup of hot coffee in my hands.
“A greenhouse,” Alessandro said, watching the excavator bite into the old roof beams. “For your mother’s flowers. Or anything else you want to grow that doesn't need to survive in the dark.”
I smiled, slipping my hand into his. His fingers closed tightly around mine, calloused and warm.
“You know,” I murmured, looking up at him, “Emma still asks about the man with the big jacket.”
Alessandro chuckled, a deep, resonant sound that had become one of my favorite things in the world. “She calls me the Shirt Washer.”
“She’s not wrong. You still haven't told me what you did with that coffee-stained shirt.”
“It’s framed,” he said deadpan.
I stopped walking and stared at him. “You’re joking.”
“I’m entirely serious,” Alessandro replied, a wicked, charming glint in his gray eyes. “It hangs on the back of my private office door. Every time a capo comes in to pitch a bad deal or lie to my face, I look at that shirt. It keeps me grounded.”
I shook my head, laughing despite myself.
May you like
“You’re impossible, Alessandro Moretti.”
“And you,” he said, pulling me closer against his side as the excavator tore down the last remnants of the cottage, “are the best thing that ever wandered into my laundry room.”
