Chapter 2 - The Bloodline's Echo
The air in Ristorante Bellagio turned to glass—brittle, freezing, and ready to shatter into a thousand lethal shards.
"You recognize her?" Lorenzo’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the hum of the surrounding dining room like a blade sliding into flesh.
My gaze remained frozen on the photograph framed in silver walnut above the top shelf of the bar. The woman in the picture wore a sleeveless black silk dress. Her collarbones were defined, her dark eyes filled with an unsettling, quiet sadness, and at the left corner of her lips was the exact double-dimple I saw in the mirror every single morning of my life.
"I... I’ve never seen that photo before in my life," I rasped, my throat raw.
It wasn't a complete lie. I had never seen that specific portrait. But as my thumb remained trapped in the tiny, warm fist of the infant pressing his head into my shoulder, a sudden memory slammed into my mind.
My mother, sitting on the floor of our dilapidated kitchen five years ago, burning a small pile of birth records in a tin pie pan. Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped the matches twice. "If anyone ever asks who you look like, Mara, you tell them you look like your father's side. You don't ask questions. You don't look back."
"Liar," the bodyguard with the broken nose muttered, his suit jacket shifting just enough to reveal the tactical holster underneath. "Boss, she’s a plant. The rival syndicate sent her. Nobody gets this close to the kid."
Lorenzo didn't move a muscle. His dark eyes—deep, storm-gray, carrying the weight of an entire criminal empire—never left my face.
"Shut up, Marco," Lorenzo said coldly.
Slowly, the mafia king stood up. He was tall—easily six-foot-three—and his presence seemed to swallow all the oxygen in the room. The black dragon inked across the back of his right hand coiled toward his knuckles, its head resting right over his pulse point.
He stepped closer to me. The scent of woodsmoke, expensive leather, and cedar surrounded me. He reached out a broad, calloused hand, his fingers stopping less than an inch from my jawline.
"Her name was Clara," Lorenzo murmured, his voice tight with an emotion he tried desperately to hide. "She was my wife. And nine months ago, she was killed in an explosion that was supposed to take me and my son with her."
My stomach flipped violently. His wife.
"I’m just a waitress," I stammered, pulling back half an inch, but little Matteo let out a sharp, protective whimper and buried his nose into the crook of my neck, refusing to let go of my apron. "I swear to you, I work double shifts here to pay off my mother’s medical bills! I don't know who your wife was!"
Lorenzo stared down at his son. The cold, ruthless exterior of the city's most feared man cracked, showing a raw, hemorrhaging wound underneath.
"Matteo hasn't touched a woman since the night Clara died," Lorenzo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. "He screams if a nanny comes near him. He won't eat unless I feed him myself. Yet he’s holding you like you're his entire world."
"I... I don't know why," I sobbed quietly, terrified that if I moved too quickly, the armed men around us would open fire.
At that moment, the back doors of the kitchen burst open. My manager, Mr. Rossi, hurried out, holding a bottle of reserve wine, sweating through his cheap shirt.
"Mr. Moretti!" Rossi gasped, bowing his head frantically. "Is everything to your satisfaction? Is the waitress bothering you? Mara, put the child down and get back to the kitchen!"
Lorenzo didn't even look at Rossi. He simply raised his left hand, flicking two fingers.
Marco stepped sideways, grabbed Rossi by his silk tie, and shoved him hard against the brick wall behind table five. The remaining patrons in the restaurant let out collective gasps, several women dropping their silver forks onto their plates.
"Clear the restaurant," Lorenzo ordered quietly.
"Boss?" Marco asked.
"I said clear the damn building."
Within thirty seconds, Marco and three other men in tailored black suits moved through Ristorante Bellagio like shadows, clearing out thirty dining tables without raising their voices. A quiet, terrifying word in a customer's ear was enough to make wealthy couples leave their food half-eaten, dropping hundred-dollar bills onto tables as they practically ran for the valet.
The heavy front doors clicked shut. The deadbolt turned.
May you like
The restaurant was empty, save for the hum of the ice machine, the mafia monarch, his guards, and me—standing under the warm lights with a mafia baby asleep against my pounding heart.
"You're coming with me," Lorenzo said.
